A Sense of Dark
by PenguinKye
Summary: Schwarz is strong, the Hunter is stronger. Sometimes when the odds are against you, you defy them. Sometimes you don't. You never can know until the end of the story. Violence, death, revenge. Various POVs. R and R please! Semiregular updates.
1. Pre

A Sense of Dark

Prologue

by Kye Syr

It is the dead of night, because that is the only good time, and storms clouds roll and knead overhead. One of his clever ideas have led them here, but now that he is here, he is not sure it is so clever. He has remembered that, after all, their hostage is the boss's daughter, and if he goes somehow wrong then he is doomed. Their enemy is here, though, and the two of them are enough to uproot four wind-tossed flowers and plant them rather more permanently under the ground.

There is nothing wrong with the plan, he tells himself, ducking behind a pillar and whispering to one of the enemy like a serpent. Nothing wrong with it at all—if only I could concentrate.

For there is something in his mind, the sharp mind, the perfect mind, the Mastermind, that is not as it should be, something buzzing, tingling, tickling, teasing. He does not understand it, but even as his purring, lying voice slides through the air and into the ears of fools, it purrs at him, taunts him, takes him in its grip.

He ducks when the katana blade slices improbably through his shelter, grins his Cheshire Cat grin, tucks his hands in his pockets. Who could ever doubt the words of a snake? his smile says. Not this snake. No one could ever doubt this snake.

The enemy thinks otherwise, and they lash out, despite internal confusion. He fights back, and his comrade-in-death appears, a whirlwind and a fury, to trample their weak and self-righteous foe. He shoots, his comrade slices, and then he realizes there is nothing left to shoot. As he realizes, the presence in his mind pinches at him, and he gives a tiny gasp. He and his comrade are back-to-back, and he leans against the other just enough that he can remain standing. A mind is a delicate thing. The pinch is terrible.

The enemy strikes, while the girl is now on the ground next to her brother—yes, he told her that, and serve them right. One bleeding heart and one brat. Better that they are related than that they be allowed to make miniatures of themselves.

His comrade fights back and he dodges; his speed makes him a good dodger. But he would rather be killing. Killing would at least perhaps stop the ringing in his ears, the one that roars and shrieks like tinnitus. Suddenly the roar crescendos and he cannot see. In his blindness, he projects his disorientation and his confusion.

His partner, aiming at the brother, feels the jolt of projection, and, blinded in both eyes for a moment instead of one, looses his bullets into the wrong body.

When the vision of both has cleared, they see the enemy staring between them and the trembling girl's body. The brother has begun to scream. They see this and know that things have gone terribly wrong. The first shakes, almost invisibly, and then shakes out of his frozenness.

"Come on!" he commands the other. His partner blinks his one eye, swears, and sprints after.

When the enemy is out of sight, with no sign of following, the one eye turns on him, keen and wary.

"You are broken," says the eye's master. "What is broken in you?"

The other does not reply. Behind them, as rain bursts free of the heavy clouds and spatters the earth like cold, thin blood, the girl stops breathing, and her brother wails.


	2. S: A

Disclaimer: The characters herein belong to Project W unless otherwise noted by yours truly. And no, I'm not making money. Jeez. It's not like anyone ever even reads these stupid things—particularly not lawyers, who mostly aren't reading fanfiction at all.

Notes: This is the first chapter in my rewrite of the story Midnight Garden. I finally have some idea what's going on, and so cherish hope that this might actually be more than the drivelpile I wrote first. gasp There might even be a PLOT! Please enjoy.

A Sense of Dark

Chapter One

by Kye Syr

I was waiting in a park behind a tree in very cold October and the middle of the night for someone to kill.

The other three were nearby, but Brad had decided that we'd do best to spread out. His vision was clear enough, but pinpointing location in a dark, frosty field covered in identical trees can be not easy. So I was essentially alone, and it was late and I was pissed, because we'd been out here an hour and Weiß wasn't here yet. Slow bastards. If my toes fell off, I was going to kill them twice.

The cold and the wait were really only 2/3 of what was bothering me—the other third bothered me much more than they did. I'd had a buzz in the back of my mind for weeks, a pinch and a prod that made me lose control. It felt like pins and needles, as though part of my brain were being sat on. It was uncomfortable and unfun and I didn't know why it was there, and it made our exciting midnight park tour even more exciting.

Of course, it would be even more exciting yet if it did what it had done four weeks before and screwed me over completely. Probably if Brad had known about the buzz, had known that it was the cause of Ouka Takatori's Untimely Demise, he wouldn't have let me out of the house. But I liked privacy, not prodding, and I definitely hated doctors. I'd rather let Brad think we'd meant to kill the girl, even that I'd made the shot, than let him know that my all-important brain was fritzing on me. Without my brain I was next to worthless, and I didn't want Brad Crawford deciding that I was no longer a necessary commodity. Him or Eszett.

I poked out, to see if I could find the Errant Weiß anywhere nearby. Or just plain anywhere, if it came to that. I reached out a little tendril of mind, ready to snare them like a spiderweb if I came upon them, shuffling minds like cards in a Hallmark display. Cotton candy, gothy, dirty, vaguely funny, downright dull; that was humanity. But could I find Weiß?

I couldn't. Wherever they were was either inconceivably distant (say, Mars) or crowded with about twenty thousand people. Since they were supposed to be here, that was kind of strange.

Brad, I said.

Hm? he hmed.

I can't find them anywhere, I said. How are we going to kill what isn't here? More important, how are we going to kill anyone with all our limbs popping off of frostbite?

They'll come, Schuldig, he said. If you can't find them, that's your own fault. And your limbs will not 'pop off' from frostbite.

He paused, and added, Not tonight, anyway. They'll change color and become paralyzed first.

Thanks, Brad, I said. I feel better now.

You should, he said. Now shut up and pay attention.

I shut up and paid attention. It would have been easier without the buzz.

I reached and I looked for a few minutes, but finally I dropped the thread of mind with a growl. If they weren't there, I wasn't going to find anything, so why should I bother looking? I hit the tree behind me in frustration. Somehow the jolt to my arm must've jolted my head too, because the buzz was worse, very much worse, and I couldn't see except for there was someone in front of me. Redhead. But I was the redhead…

Brad! I called without thinking, not caring whether he found out or not, he always knew what to do. I was the redhead!

Brad felt sharp and worried when he answered.

Schuldig! he snapped, not at me. They're not far away! You're going to—

"Schwarz!" spat the other me. Not me…the Weiß one…oh, it hurt…

I looked, I couldn't see right through the buzz, but I looked, the other three were behind him, and the one with the string, he dodged around like a squirrel, my throat, I was pressed against the tree, it hurt, and my head-- the other red said, you killed his sister, and I saw the little one, not Nagi, he looked like he would kill me, and the redhead said, later, and he pulled out his sword.

BRAD! I yelled, and Far and Nagi heard it too, and I must have stayed attached, because the redhead put his sword in my shoulder and they screamed when I screamed and everything buzzed and Brad swore and nothing

They must have dragged me, because my back felt ragged.

That was the first thing I thought when I woke. Then I noticed that the rest of me hurt too, so it made no difference, and that I was in handcuffs. The little pricks had cuffed me, one pair to each limb, the chains wrapped around the limbs of the chair I was seated in. It was a metal chair, all angles, and it poked.

Shit, I said, and then I tried to find someone besides me.

Brad? I said, because if he was there, poking his brain would only piss him off. Nagi? Far?

No answer. I wriggled in the poking chair and pushed out a big breath all at once to keep from panicking. Oh, I hated being out of control. I hated hurting. I hated the buzz.

But most of all, I hated being tied up in a dark room by people who definitely wanted me wounded.

They must have heard the chains rattle, because all at once, it wasn't dark anymore and they were there. They'd never been a bit intimidating until this exact moment. But I was tied up, and I hurt already, and I knew they wanted me to hurt a lot more. The blondie—I snagged the names I didn't already know—Youji looked smug, and Ken looked blank, and—whatever the redhead's name was—Ran? Aya?—whoever looked stormy. As for Omi (who thought he might also be Mamoru)…I didn't want him near me.

It was his sister, after all.

Youji chuckled. It annoyed me. I wanted to hurt him.

"Are the tiger's teeth cut short today?" he asked, in that infuriating, self-assured way of really clueless torturers. That's it, I thought, and started to shove at his mind, but the buzz was so strong all of a sudden that I could see only black, couldn't push, and I sank down with a gasp. What was this?

Youji looked bemused, but didn't let his bemusement throw him.

"Do you hurt?" he said, and he lifted my chin so that my face faced his. I turned my eyes away, and so I barely saw the fist rushing at me. I ducked into the nearest mind to cushion the blow, and jumped out again, feeling burned. Omi, of course.

Yohji's fist hit me hard enough to snap my head painfully to one side.

Shit, I said (my new favorite word). My mind stung with Omi's rage; I was nearly overcome with how much he hated me. Everything he wanted to do to me, I could feel. I stared at him and shivered.

Youji's grin grew. I was surprised it was possible; he'd already looked like the victim of a tragic Botox accident. But it was possible, and his grin grew. He followed my look to Omi.

"He does hate you a lot, doesn't he?" said Youji, turning my head again. Wahoo, Schuldig Puppet Theatre. "And you know what he wants to do to you, don't you?" His touch left my chin and he hit again, knocking my head in the other direction. Buzz, buzz, buzz. I didn't answer.

Youji leaned into my ear, Omi burning to one side and the others standing like sentinals to the other. "Murder makes people want to do terrible things, Schuldig," he said. Don't call me that, I thought at him, and it must have worked, because he twitched. "Terrible things," he continued without comment. "Not many get to do them. And if we didn't do evil already, I wouldn't let Omi do this. But we do evil. And you, of all people, deserve to understand suffering."

Of course I do. Because I am so much worse with so much less cause than you. Because I don't feel others' suffering every day. Because the honey of the mind when I find it so far overwhelms the ash of it when the mind finds me.

"The truth is," said Youji, and his breath was fogging up my ear, "I wanna see you suffer too. You owned Schreient, and Schreient took Asuka from me. I want Omi to torture you beyond imagination, and if it takes him a year to kill you, I want to watch without a blink." I rolled my eyes to meet his (they were green) and didn't say a word. Yohji stepped back with a smile. His green eyes glittered hard like emeralds.

An unflawed emerald, someone had told me, is more valuable than a diamond.

Omi stepped forward, silent and vengeful. Yohji smiled.

They were valuable because it was almost impossible to find unflawed emeralds. All of them were messed up somehow or other, and so, for the most part, emeralds ended up cheaper than diamonds.

He was holding something that looked sharp and gruesome. Sometimes, I thought, it's better not to see what's coming.

"Yours are flawed," I told blondie, just to confuse him.

I closed my eyes and let it begin.

AN: Well, I feel good about this. Much better than the original. I reread the original as I was writing this version, and….ech. Bad writing. I hope this pleases new people, and I hope to have further revision chapters up in the near future.


	3. N: A

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Two

by PenguinKye

I thought I'd die when Schu got stabbed. Catching a Schu projection is like feeling what he feels for two, and then playing it over on high volume. I didn't want to be stabbed at all, but being stabbed on projection was horrible. Luckily I passed out before I could make any obvious noises, and I woke up before someone tripped on me. I had to guess that it was Fujimiya who had stabbed Schu, because no one else could have caught him. How Fujimiya'd done it was mystery enough. Anyway, assuming it was Fujimiya, I didn't want to attract too much attention from the other Flower Babies. Not, at least, until I could see.

I fumbled around until I found my tree, and leaned on it. Crawford was gonna be really angry about this. Schu'd been off-kilter for a while (probably drinking), but getting stabbed was beyond off-kilter. I wondered if Crawford was conscious, and if Schu was alive. I couldn't feel him touching my mind anymore. After the projection, when I was halfway to the ground, the connection had cut out. That meant he was either out cold or corpse cold.

I hoped he wasn't dead. I liked Schu.

There was a noise nearby, a crunch of listless snow and the muted crackle of long-dead leaves. It was a familiar step, but I was ready to move even as I spoke. You can't be too careful when your life revolves around death.

"Farf?" I whispered. The crackles stopped, wary. "Nagi," I said. "'s Nagi." The crackles started.

"Took him," said Farf, sounding angry, and I relaxed. He crouched down beside me and began to finger the straps on his pants. 'Took him'? Which one? Farf had been nearer to Schu than Crawford, according to the plan, and he didn't really like Crawford enough to get angry about abduction. And Schu was the stabbed one. Had to be Schu.

"Alive?" I asked. Farf would know, if anyone would, whether someone were alive or dead.

"Yes. Made noises," said Farf. He bared his teeth. "I want to kill them." And they want to kill us, I thought, imagining what they would do if they could get their hands on….Schu. The kid's sister, the boss's daughter, all in all not a good person for them to have killed. I thought of golf clubs. I thought of Weiß and their wires and katana and arrows and claws, and of cutting slicing blood all over. (Not that there wasn't normally.)

Poor Schu. And Crawford would be so angry on top of it.

"Crawford?" I asked.

"Huh," said Farf, like that was the least of it. And it probably was, for Farf. As he saw it, Crawford was just an organized way to kill people. Farf could still kill without him. He liked me, and he liked Schu very much, but Crawford was just a presence for him. You couldn't make Farf talk about things he didn't care about; if he didn't care about it, why should he talk about it? You could only talk to him about what he liked. So I did.

"Crawford will help," I said. "We'll go get Schu." Farf looked at me.

"Or I'll kill him, too," he said, meaning Crawford. There were many days when this wasn't what he'd have said. Why did he have to be in one of his bad moods?

"All right," I said. "Have you seen him?" Farf rose and began to walk away. Yes? I thought, and stood up to follow him.

Crawford, as it turned out, was some three hundred meters away, rubbing his shoulder and looking stormy.

"Why didn't that little fool hear them coming?" he snapped at himself, pacing. "What kind of telepath can't hear someone fifteen feet away? And what did he mean by shouting at me like that? If I have a headache tomorrow…"

"Crawford," I said. He stopped pacing, though his hand, now on his temple, kept drawing furious little lines.

"Yes, Nagi? Must you say something?" No, I thought. I must refrain from kicking you and Farf.

"We have to find him," I said.

"Do we?" said Crawford. "He practically deserves them and all of their torments for that projection of his." His hand moved back to his vicarious shoulder and he scowled. I stared at him patiently. He didn't mean it, though Farf, growling in the background, might have thought he did. Soon he would remember it, would realize that he was lying and was sorry about his lie.

Only a few seconds passed before Crawford dropped his hand and said, "I know, I know. We do have to retrieve him. I'm simply troubled-- he ought to have heard them coming. And I can't think what about Weiß would panic him so much. No, no, we'll fetch him free of them. Farfarello, I suppose you saw which direction they were going?" Farf pointed. Out of town, into the near hills.

"Good," said Crawford. "Nagi, you know Weiß inside out. Anything in that direction that you can think for them to go?" I nodded.

"A cabin," I said. "Called Villa White." A horrible name, but at least the Weiß had a theme. How they afforded the place on flower money I didn't know. Name aside, it was at least appropriate. Tsukiyono (or Takatori—whichever) was anal about files. He kept them like mad. The nice thing about being a good telekinetic was that I could move information as easily as people, and as soon as Weiß's records were updated, so were ours. So from what I knew from Tsukiyono (my stupidest and most helpful informant) was that the last time they'd been at their cabin, Weiß had used it to permanently clean the clocks of four murderers who were interrogating and threatening the life of one of their friends. Hm. _That _seemed oddly familiar.

"You can direct me?" I nodded again.

"Then let's go," he said. He strode into the trees, and Farf and I followed close.

I hope he's alive, I thought. Beside me, Farf gave a predatory shiver and reached down to caress one of his knives. I thought what Farf would do to Weiß compared to what Weiß would do to Schu, and decided I'd rather be Schu.

The cabin was recognizable from Tsukiyono's notes alone. If I hadn't wanted him dead, I would have been almost nearly a little impressed on his precision, even if he was a girly boy and an idiot.

Crawford touched the door.

"Locked," he said. "Nagi?" I felt inside the lock, learned its shape and its wants, and nudged. There was a click, and Crawford nodded shortly. "Good," he said, and pushed the door open. It made no noise. Equally noiseless, we slipped into the cabin to find our Schu and our prey. There was no one where we walked in, only silly bits of 'rustic' furniture and unlit lamps.

"Where's the basement?" whispered Crawford. "We need to be there." I didn't know. I held up a finger. Wait. I could move files from one computer to another, and so could I move them from my computer to my head. Wake up, stupid, I told my computer. It growled at me and stretched away. Files, Weiß Imports, where, where, where, there! I looked at Tsukiyono's very helpful blueprint. Smart enough to have it on file, but stupid enough to have it on file. It was for the good of mankind, I thought, that he be killed. The stupid were only useful up to a point.

"This way," I said, and led the way to the basement, where we were supposed to be. I opened the door softly, and light broke through the crack. Beneath us, I heard the not-quite-familiar voices of Weiß, and Weiß only.

"Go on, Nagi," said Crawford, and pushed me into motion.

"Kill them," breathed Farf into my ear.

I began down the steps, silent as Schwarz always was when it needed to be. Schwarz, who would be not much of Schwarz with only three.

I really hoped that Schu was alive.

Notes: Come on, peeps. I know you're reading it. So leave me some reviewwwwws. resorts to begging As much as I know I'll post even if NO ONE leaves even ONE WORD, I would be so much happier if you did. ;;


	4. B: A

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Three

by PenguinKye

October 11, 199X—4:10 AM

I questioned the wisdom of our decision to retrieve Schuldig as the stairs sank without noise beneath my weight. My most analytical mind told me that we who remained would be safer if he went unrescued. Additionally, Schuldig's ability to take a reasonably controlled situation and magnify and distort it into an incalculable chaos had itself magnified in recent weeks. After the death of Takatori's offspring, I had, I believe sagely, refrained from allowing Schuldig to go on assignment. Such sloppiness as that fatal mistake, left to itself, could cause even greater damage at any opportunity. I had hoped that by waiting for some month before letting him into the field, I had safeguarded us from catastrophe. I certainly hadn't Seen otherwise.

Yet now Schuldig had gotten himself captured by the very enemy we had gone to kill, an enemy which, by my calculations, ought not to have been a great trial to apprehend, and ultimately remove from our list of troubles. Preserving the life of one suddenly so inept, in the strictest logical sense, made no sense whatsoever.

Unfortunately for strict logical sense, I liked Schuldig, the same way one might like an uncontrolled puppy or small child. He was a creature to be steered gently in the right direction, and when properly steered, he usually performed admirably. Conscience would not allow me to leave him in the hands of those who did not…appreciate him, any more than it would let me walk by an abused dog. I had a weakness for such dependent beasts.

Thus it was that we made our way down these steps into the den of the dullest of cats to spirit our Schuldig away. Farfarello and I followed close behind Nagi, all three of us invisible to the absorbed and bitter spirits we hunted.

Nagi reached the bottom step and melted into the shadow behind them as though he were shadow himself, and Farfarello followed suit. I did not. I was the one who called attention to the silent. I felt a swirl of anger as, unseen by Weiß, I saw what they did to our Schuldig.

He is not theirs to hurt, I thought, and I did not question our wisdom anymore.

One of them raised something sharp. I had to speak before the surprise made the Weiß jerk, and hurt Schuldig more seriously than he intended.

"Is that the only weapon you hold against me?" I said, and, as I had anticipated, the boy swung around, his limbs leaping in his surprise. Schuldig stirred at my voice, stirred like a well-pawed mouse.

"Who's there?" demanded the one with the sword. I stepped fully from the stairs and into the light of the room, and the Weiß gasped collectively. As though it would be someone else, when the blood of my kin stained their blades.

"You have something not belonging to you," I said. "You have not taken good care of it."

"He's a murderer," said the blond one.

"So are you," I said. Sword-boy growled.

"We only hunt the wicked," he said through his teeth. "It's your kind that deserves death. You are perverse, evil. You kill because you can, because it is a pleasure for you." I laughed at that, and their scowls deepened.

"Is it?" I said. "No, we kill for business." Except Farfarello. "As far as I can tell, it is you who are doing evil for pleasure, and you have not even the decency to kill. You are petty torturers, and you berate me for my evil ways." The youngest one, the feminine one with the blood on his hands, emitted a small, strangled noise and dropped his knife. It clattered on the floor, loud in the silence.

"It doesn't matter what you say," said a dark, and thus far silent, young man. "You are our enemy. Why would you come by yourself to fight us? You know you must fight us." I smiled.

"You do not think that I, unarmed, am enough to fend you off?"

"No," said the young man. His eyes were serious and thoughtful, and he seemed not as easily distracted as the other three.

"Well, I think that what I've got with me will be enough," I said. They had only enough time to look quizzical before the young, bloody one shot with alarming speed across the room and into the wall.

They didn't know Nagi, and they were astounded.

"Omi!" cried the serious one, roused from thoughtfulness. Omi sagged limply against the wall and whimpered. I couldn't blame him. High speeds and concrete walls rarely make a comfortable combination.

"How--?" gasped the blond, as the sword-boy growled (it seemed a favorite trick of his). Nagi stepped out and looked at him. His eyes had only a tint of red in them, which meant he hadn't exerted himself in throwing the boy. The blond didn't have Nagi to fear, though, because Farfarello leapt out of hiding and cornered him in an instant.

As for sword-boy, suddenly sensible, he raised his katana to have done with Schuldig before we could get to him. I shot forward and struck the back of his head, and he fell limp at my feet without striking the blow. The serious boy looked uncertain about what he was to do, and as long as he was uncertain, I thought to leave him be. Farfarello was a more pressing engagement.

I looked to Schuldig with some concern; he was breathing shallowly, and what time they'd been given had clearly been used thoroughly by Weiß. Farfarello, standing, blade drawn over a crouching enemy, was whispering, "Kill, kill, kill!" I knew that if he got started, it would take time we hadn't got for him to finish. And I certainly didn't need to give the other three an extra reason for vendettas.

"Farfarello!" I said. "Let it wait. Schuldig needs you more." Farfarello's blade disappeared and he materialized next to me, leaving a shell-shocked opponent in the corner. Nagi looked at Schu's wrists and, with a little nose wrinkle, unlocked all four pair of handcuffs at once. He looked at the offending items for a long moment, and then up at the remaining Weiß.

"I never knew kittens were kinky."

The serious one, to my great surprise, grinned and let loose a single bemused bark of laughter.

"Good to know you're still a teenager, even if you are a killer." Nagi's eyes narrowed, and he raised a finger in the direction of the limp Omi.

"So is he," Nagi said. Schuldig, meanwhile, was hissing as Farfarello lifted him onto his back. His eyes were open to slits, but he didn't seem to see clearly. Considering the damage dealt him by our enemies, this was unsurprising.

"Are you going to kill us today?" the dark one asked.

"No," I said. "You and your companions have not left us with time for such luxury." I gestured to Schuldig. He was awake enough to sound wry, even if he couldn't look it.

No luxury, Brad? Then why the chitchat?

Awake enough to pester me as well, it seemed.

No scolding, just leaving! Hurting!

It felt odd to receive such adamant commands from the silent, catatonic form on Farfarello's back.

"Yes, Schuldig, we are leaving," I said, and looked at the Weiß. "Do not even consider the foolish acts of which you and your associates are so fond. We may be fewer than usual, but we will win regardless."

He nodded, still so calm that I could not help but wonder whether he was part of Weiß at all, whether he cared in the least about his temporarily fallen comrades. They groaned on the floor, and he looked as cool as if we were discussing tulip care. It was discomfiting. But it was not, I supposed, something to be considered now. There were already things to be taken care of, and before anything else, I would take care of them.

"Good evening," I said irrelevantly, nodding to the calm young man opposite me. I turned to the stairs we had come down minutes before, and lead the silent way out of the earth and onto it, out of falsely lit prison into free and midnight dark.

------------------

PenguinKye

July 13, 2004

Read...and REVIEW! >. Pleeeeease...


	5. F: A

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Four

by PenguinKye

October 11, 199X—5:30 AM

We go there but I take him home alone and it's not right because where is his voice? The other ones don't talk It is not a good talking time. But for my schuld it is always a good talking time, so he is not talking and it isn't right. I feel on my back, he isn't in the right pieces. Won't talk, and put together wrong. Bad, bad, bad. Take apart stupid people who took him apart.

Brad makes people come and put him together. It takes so long a time, and I don't like it because I don't know the putters-together, and they're touching my schuld. I want to make them stop, but the mover tells me it's not bad, they'll make him better, don't hurt them or they can't help us. Nagi is good for stopping anger, quiet strong hurt well all together. Don't want to hurt him, don't want to hurt when he says no.

The people leave but then the claw is being boss and says to us, we mustn't wake him, he needs time, don't go in, and I am angry. My eye sees the mover and he is all over warnings. So I don't fight. I ignore. Brad tries to stop me that, catch the claw in me, but Nagi looks at him too and he doesn't understand him as much as I do, but he listens anyway and lets me go in.

My schuld is little little little but he's not. The claw is taller than he is. Nagi is shorter. He is stunted by moving. But my schuld isn't little but he is. I am angry, wanting to kill the prey who preyed on him and made him smaller than the stunted mover.

My schuld will not wake up when I sit down. He is all wrapped up in penance like me, arms face and body, all white not moving. It is maybe stopping his ears so he doesn't hear me and wake up. He is living. He rises falls rises with breaths, so he is living. He will not stop me, so I put hands on his face, which is soft and cool not dead. He is my schuld and beautiful.

It is cold in this room and not good for sick taken apart people. I lie down and I stare at my schuld and if he wakes up and can move enough to do it he will throw me out the door for being. But it is a cold room, and I don't want him to be cold too. Cold is dead. My schuld can never be dead. Can Not. I am warm and I make him warm and I will not fall asleep because he will come awake without me.

They took him apart and made him little.

I lie and think about killing things and taking them to pieces and showing them every thing about themselves that I hate.

notes This is a different chapter four than I had originally written, designed to bridge the gap between Schu's rescue and recovery and introduce Far's POV (a note on that—sorry it's so short, but just as in the original Midnight Garden, I feel better with Farf's chapters as short and succinct as possible. His manner of thought in particular makes lengthy chapters next to impossible).The original chapter four may or may not find a later incarnation as (ta-dah!) chapter five. I don't yet rightly know. I wasn't quite satisfied with it from the start, and using it later may be going against good instinct. We'll see. In the meantime, do review. I'll catch y'all later. Kye Syr, July 23, 2004.


	6. H: A

Note: UARGH! Sorry about yesterday's post! Since I have a prologue, the whole chapter count is off by one. Apparently that was just too much for me yesterday and I posted THE WRONG CHAPTER. I didn't mean to give you chapter six before chapter five. ;; We'll try this again? Oh yes, and I can see your hits, but I'd like your thoughts too…so please review, won't you? 6

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Five

by PenguinKye

October 12, 199X—9:20 AM

Don't wake up.

Don't wake up.

It's such a pain to be alive. I remember now, it's such a pain. So if I remember, why am I waking up? Why am I not dead when I know it wouldn't be so bad as living?

Someone's voice, which has taken up residence in my brain, tells me not to be stupid, because no one knows whether death is better than life until they've died and found out firsthand. They tell me that, as far as they know, no one has ever returned from the grave to tell us all about it, and even if they did it might be subjective—a completely different experience from one person to the next. There is no way to know what death is like until you are dead.

I don't understand why someone is telling me this, or even more, why there is someone in my brain when it should be that they can't get through my blocks. I don't understand why I feel heavy, like I've been buried in books, or why even though I'm opening my eyes, everything stays dark. I don't understand why I hurt so badly or who I am or what I'm doing wherever it is that I am. I don't understand the colour wheel or algebra. I don't understand how just three notes make a chord, but only hundreds of fibers make a cord.

I think I'm a little bit delirious.

Someone walks into the room I'm in and explains one of my troubles by turning on a lamp.

I see the face of the walker and it is someone I know, though at the moment I'm too dizzy to know who it is. It is a boy. He looks serious and worried and at me. He's holding water in his hands.

"Schu?" he says, and it's to me, but I am trying to understand what he is holding. Ah. The water is in a glass, I realize. That would explain why it isn't dripping.

"Hi, Nagi," my voice says. I hear it with interest; I haven't considered speaking even now, and what I am saying despite myself is useful.

The boy's name is Nagi. That's right.

"Crawford said you'd wake up," Nagi says. Who is Crawford?

"I wish I hadn't. Feel like crap. And if Brad saw so, why isn't he in here instead of making you do it?" That's done it. I'm worn out. No more talking. 'Brad'?

"He's being Crawfish," Nagi says. He has an annoyingly quiet voice. Like a mole. Moles only squeak loud enough to hear when they're being killed. I wonder whether Nagi would squeak if I killed him.

"Surprise. When isn't he?"

"I dunno. I don't mind being here."

"You should. I'm pissed and in pain. Damn Weiß." Weiß. That was it. They were the ones who hurt me. I am surprised not to have remembered. All in all, I'm not doing very well at remembering. When Nagi leaves, I know, I won't know any more than this conversation tells me. I hope that I keep talking.

Except I don't even know what I am saying, and what I am saying and what I am thinking sound like such entirely different people. And even this voice inside, it doesn't feel like me. Whoever me is. Is it the nasally voice full of sulk and silk that I hear saying such alien things? Or is it this person I am in my head, calculating and compiling and storing knowledge as though I've never done anything else?

Or is it neither of us?

I feel very strange, but I keep talking, still sounding as casual as anyone might after a run-in with a bloodthirsty mob.

"You don't have to listen to him, you know," I say. "You can do what you want for once."

"Brought drugs and water," Nagi says, motioning, ignoring my words. Not surprising. I'm glad to see the painkillers, at least. He knew that I'd need them, I know, but Nagi doesn't say half of what he means out loud. He's so quiet all the time. Sometimes I slip inside his brain, when he forgets to build his shields, and I hear what he's thinking. People are always so afraid when they meet Far, but that's only because he wears his crazy like a straightjacket, right out where everyone can see it. Nagi is oblique. He's near as crazy as Far, but he hides it in dark, deep places full of blood and hollow of heart. He's dangerous. Mostly to himself, I think.

I think I might slide into his mind even now, play vampire, suck up all that blood through a straw. I dip, test the waters with my figurative toe, sink in slowly like into a perfect bath, letting myself glide away while a little part of my brain takes several little red pills from the boy and downs them all at once with the water he holds. I twirl around in the waters of Nagi's mind (because he's one of those who turn out like water, instead of desert or dark or woods or velvet—everyone is a little different), and experience him. I know that I've been here many times, but for some reason it feels new, unfamiliar.

Nagi flinches.

"Schu, get out of my head," he says, sounding angry. Uh-oh.

"I'm not in your head, Nagi-kun," I say.

"Yes, you are," Nagi says, which is true. Except that even as he says it, I deny it, and I sound so vehement, feel so sick with force, that I can't believe myself to be lying. I wouldn't deny it if it were true, not at this point. It's not my way.

Then why can I see what he is thinking?

"I'm not there, Nagi!" Shut up! I tell me. Wait until I understand!

"It feels like—" Nagi puts a hand to his head. He looks puzzled. His thoughts are whirling. I feel like I'm in a blender. "It feels half like you, and half not…Schu, what's going on…?" A lot of words, for him. Why does he only talk so much when I need to think?

My body's muscles are tensing, because I (the outside me) am getting angry from trepidation.

"What the hell are you talking about, Nagi?" my mouth says. I am uneasy. I pull out from Nagi's mind, shaking water off myself as I do, and retreat to my own mind.

Retreat to my own mind.

Retreat!

Someone, something, is stopping me, and I find myself strung between two psyches, stretching out and drooping like a strand of glass at the torch. I will break soon if I do not pull free of one or both. Nagi has blocked me, and my own body will not accept me.

"Schu!" Nagi says, sounding urgent. "Schu, what's going on?"

"It's not me," says my body. "Whoever was in your head, it wasn't me. It's trying to get back in!" I do not understand what I am saying. I cannot be talking about me! That is _my _body. I belong there! It's where my mind goes.

Or is it?

I was not convinced that it was me until such a claim was denied.

Something about this sets a telescope before me, and every twist brings things closer to focus. I almost begin to understand.

"Get out!" says Schu, although his name is Schuldig, isn't it? and shoves his mind against mine hard enough to jolt me loose of my hold on him.

Different people, we're different people. And I do wonder who I am? Now that I float, using Nagi's block as a mindhold, who am I? Pull in the focus. I almost see.

"It's still trying to get in," Nagi says, and Schuldig, with a shove fair mighty for a wounded little telepath, swats me off the edge of Nagi's mind.

There is nowhere to hold! I scrabble for an anchor, let me not be lost outside a body! There is no purpose in understanding if I am stranded! That is the worst fate a telepath can have, floating without self or substance. I will die forever if I cannot take hold!

"Gone," say Nagi and Schuldig at once

…then why am I not dying? I float here free and it feels fine. It feels familiar. It feels even habitual. A stunning realization: this is what I _do_.

Focus achieved. Everything is sharp and clear for miles.

This is what I do, and I know who I am. I laugh in my noncorporeal way, and with a joyous rush of energy claw my way into Schuldig's mind.

You Can Never Be Rid Of Me! I tell him, laughing, because isn't it nice to know who you are, and to know that you are the strongest?

I might have gotten stuck in this little telepath when those fool normals put their swords in him, but I would always remember who I was and what I was doing, and when I did, I could never be defeated.

I know my purpose.

I give him a mental backhand to repay his earlier shove and, laughing, twist out of his mind in a way that will hurt for hours.

Author's Notes: It took me a really long time to write this one. I kept hitting the same rough spots and not being able to get through them. Oh well. I have triumphed! (I hope. You'll have to tell me…not that anyone is meant to understand yet.) Catch y'all later! Kye Syr, October 4, 2004.


	7. B: B

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Six

by PenguinKye

October 12, 199X—9:55 AM

"He does not appear to recall anything of it," I said, and even in the phone, I could see Unmei's perplexed and wrinkled brow.

"There are things not right in the world," she said. "It is the way of the Powerful to know when the order of our world has been disturbed. We cause disturbance, and we learn the pattern of our people's wake. We know that something has been tipped which should not have left its rest."

"You think that it must be this great tipped power of yours?" I asked her. "Are you certain it did not come from within his own mind? Shock would not be out of the question, considering preceding events."

"It is not him," she said. "Not unless there is something more wrong with him than I suspect. I have met your boy, in your thoughts and words. I humbly suggest that I have learned his strength, and he does have strength. He would not be so overwhelmed by tortures of the body that he would slip into such a delirium as it would have to be."

"You did not, I think, know him at Rosenkreuz."

"Indeed I did not, but my judgement stays: the trouble which infects him is not from within him." I considered.

"It is an exterior force, then. You are among the powerful, Unmei-sama. Can you not see who it is who tips the scale?"

"No," Unmei replied. "We do not know yet what has caused this unrest. We worry, for to be so blind when such a great power is upon us is something we have never before experienced. Those of us strong enough to withhold our services and selves from Eszett ought to be strong enough to know every Power in the world."

"And yet you don't. Hm."

"I am sorry."

"No, no. I do not blame you. It is merely an unpleasent curiousity. I suppose you have no idea what to do about this, then?"

"If the presence has left," said Unmei, "then there is nothing to be done. Wait and see, good sir. I know this to be what you are best at."

"Yet I didn't see this coming. Well," I said, "I guess this means we're all being blinded by something or other."

"I would say so."

"Thank you for your help, Unmei-sama."

"What help I could give to you, Mr. Crawford, I give gladly, as to one of my own. We respect you, and your kin, although you are the hands of Eszett."

"We are only hands where we choose to be. I daresay we could be among your kind, now, if not when we were younger. We needed them once, but the hands as they are now are liable to creep off from the wrists and strangle the body themselves. We choose Eszett as a convenience."

"This, sir, is why we respect you in spite of it."

"Ah."

"Goodbye, Mr. Crawford."

"Goodbye, Madam."

There was a click, and I was left with very little answered for me. Wise might the separatists be, but even when they did know what was going on, they were too cryptic by far. I had the feeling from our conversation, however, that all they knew was that they were jumpy and they had nothing to jump at.

Unsatisfying, to say the least.

I stood and left my desk, shutting my door behind me with a soft but piercing click. It was uncomfortable to have the apartment so quiet. Nagi, of course, was always quiet, but Schuldig was quiet from poor condition, and Farfarello was quiet with anger (the worst kind of anger for him to have—one never knew when he was going to jump out at one). It was as though the house were dead, and I, Brad Crawford, was the only person left to walk in the suffering silence.

I did not particularly like this feeling. The dead were all very well, but the living shouldn't sound like them.

I sought to see what our quiet bunch had in store for them. I hadn't seen Schuldig's various troubles, after all, and I did not like the idea of something else, and possibly something worse, sneaking up on us without my having seen it. I thought to leave the house. There came the odd occasion when I could not see the forest for the trees; with the subjects of my queries in such close proximity as our home demanded, I could not see what lay ahead of them. If I left them, I could perhaps open the channel for their futures. I could not control my visions absolutely, but I could guide them.

But my people aside, I ought to have found other things, and it would not be their presence that warded those things off. It was a rare hour in which some unasked for snippet of future did not lodge itself inside me. Yet now, I sought, but I did not find. There was nothing, not a glimpse, not a taste, not a whisper, not a tingle of foreknowledge about anything.

I pressed my mind with all the might I had, yet even then, I was met only with silence, darkness and the unknown secrets of things that had not happened.

"We know that something has been tipped which should not have left its rest," she had said.

Even those too powerful for the powers of Eszett could not perceive it.

I leaned back in my leather chair and ran a hand through my hair. It did not matter how far I walked if my eyes themselves were blind.

Notes: THANK YOU to Bladderwrack for leaving a very kind gasp R E V I E W. I mean, as long as I have chapters, I'll put them up...but I really would like to know what people think. ;; (And yeah, I know the chapters are really short...sorry about that.)


	8. N: B

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Seven

by PenguinKye

October 12, 199X—4:00 PM

I would've sworn I'd gone nuts and imagined everything if I hadn't known already that Schu was the best actor I'd ever met.

I was sitting under the table (which is the best place to read), wishing we had an animal in the house that wasn't an insect. It was always cold there (in our house), even when it was warm. No matter how much we liked each other, no matter how much time we spent working together and no matter how many times Schu rummaged in my head, I always felt like there was this little layer of ice between each of us and everything. I would have liked to have something furry, something that didn't notice the ice and walked right through it.

Also, being under the table is good for reading, but it's very lonely. And anyway, I was being pensive.

But to Schu . He walked in on me, not even realizing I was there (which should have been a clue by itself, shouldn't it?), and acting like anything as thought there weren't a problem in the world.

I had seen him. They'd had him there, in their basement, and they'd done things even we would never do (just because we're evil doesn't mean we're _that_ evil). They'd done stuff that made the least afraid person in the world almost be afraid. Not Schu, of course. He's always afraid. But it was him they'd done it to, him that had been frightening to the unfrightenable.

I had felt him. He had been someone else, someone who hurt my mind when he was in it, like poison, like malice, like fever. He had come home from Weiß, from torture, and at home, something as terrible as torture had happened. But he was rummaging in the fridge a few hours later, ignoring his horrible wounds as easily as Farf would, ignoring the anomale as though it hadn't happened.

But I knew he was a good actor. So I didn't believe it, did I?

I almost did.

What else are you going to do? When everything goes wrong all at once, a smile's a welcome thing. When no one could possibly be happy, you listen for a happy whistle. You're most optimistic when there's nothing to be optimistic about. So when you see it, you believe it, don't you? Even if you know how much they lie through their teeth. Even when everything they do is make people believe things that aren't true. You accept it, don't you? You have to be able to believe in something good. You have to believe them. Right?

I almost did.

I didn't breathe. He didn't see me, and I was already hiding, and I couldn't come out of hiding once I was there. I didn't make a sound. It's like a game, to hide, but not a fun game; you can't ever give yourself away, because something terrible will happen. So I didn't make a sound, didn't move an inch, just watched Schu's legs from under the table.

The fridge door stayed open for a long time. The cold air sifted out and sank to meet me on the floor and made our cold house even colder. I tried not to shiver. It would have been enough, a shiver. It would have been enough for him to notice.

The door shut at last, and I thought I would be able to breathe again in a couple seconds. But Schu didn't leave. He stood where he was, facing the table, his back to the fridge, and swiveled from his ankles up. Looking for us. To make sure we weren't there.

He didn't know I could see him. I knew he thought he was alone, and now that he thought he was alone, wanted to be alone on purpose, I couldn't come out. I couldn't let him know that I'd seen him check, seen him make sure I wasn't there. I couldn't let him know I'd seen him when he wasn't acting.

I should have.

He knew he was alone, so he could stop behaving like he wasn't. He made an awful sound (it was quiet but it was awful). Then he began to sink to the floor, and I was panicked, because he was going to see me, was going to come face to face with me, and I wasn't supposed to be there, so it was almost like I was betraying him. So he was sinking, further and further down, and coming closer and closer, and even though it seemed to take forever, it was all in one moment.

One moment was all it took for me to go from not there at all to the center of everything. One moment was all it took for his bravery to slip and his pain to shine. One moment, and he saw me, and I saw him, and I must have been as open a book as he was, because I was _afraid_. So he saw me. And I saw him. And for that one moment, we saw each other, and it was the worst thing that had ever happened.

_You're here_, he said, not with his mind, but with his face, and I couldn't even answer. That one look was all there was before he struggled up, ungainly, and staggered off to his room. That one look, as it went from open to shocked to angry, before it was swept back into the air with the unbending of a knee, away from me, closed again.

I noticed that there wasn't any food in his hands.

Nothing hurts a person walking the blade of a knife like a shove off the edge. It cuts. You can walk balanced, if you can only be let to know the things you want to know, and not always be told the things that are true. You can walk forever, as long as they let you see a few good things, no matter how tiny. You can practically dance that thin line, as long as you choose the perception. You can do it; you can do it, if you can believe.

I almost did.


	9. S: B

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Eight

by PenguinKye

I'm dizzy as I go back to my room, fleeing the kitchen and the Nagi within. Things are spinning: my thoughts, his thoughts, Brad's thoughts, Far's, other people's…They're all in there, whirling and whirling, so much I can hardly see in front of me. It's like something loud and deep has gone off too close and all I see and hear are the fireworks left over.

I saw him looking at me like I was the most frightening thing in the world. I am. I am. I am a horrible creature…a "dark beast", right? They damn near denied me _my_ tomorrow. But Nagi…I wouldn't want Nagi to look at me like anyone else. Not like Weiß. Not like the people I kill. Not like the people I don't. Not like any of them. He's family. He's Nagi. But he saw me, and I was open, and he was open, and he was _afraid of me_.

I stumble against Brad's office door. I hope he doesn't hear me. I hope Nagi doesn't follow me. I wish I had gotten something to eat from that stupid refridgerator. I'm hungrier than I can remember ever being. At least, not for years back. I'm cold and I'm hungry, but I'm not sure whether it's because the air is frosty and my stomach is empty. There are other ways to be hungry. There are other ways to be cold.

I'm ranting. In my head, I'm ranting. I would never do it out loud. I'm trying to walk to my door, trying to get as far as my bed. I want to tunnel into it and never come out, not for people I don't know to take over my brain like some campy science fiction flick, not for people I do know to look at me like something alien. I want to hide. It's all the fashion amongst the guilty, you know.

I think I'm going crazy.

I know Far. I know what he's like. I know crazy, and I don't want it in particular, but even as I reach safety, my own door, even as I'm twisting at the knob (it's tarnished, a brassy color), I keep reeling off. My words don't connect and my words don't make sense and I don't like my words even if they did work right. I can't turn the doorknob.

I try to turn it, I really do, I push as hard as I can and twist as far, but my arms are both hurt, and how far can you turn a knob when your wrist's in too many pieces to rotate? It makes me so angry, that it won't turn. I shouldn't have shut it behind me.

I'm going so crazy. And the door won't open. And I'm trapped with myself, not even in a safe place, not even all closed up, but out here, in the open, where they can find me and look at me like something broken has happened. Where all the trapped-with-me pieces can go flying off like blue monkeys, doing whatever they want while I wait to feel like a whole person again.

I hear something make a horrible noise, and I wonder, did I do that? Am I that far out of it? Because, really, the mindreader should know where his is before he tries to play with others'. If I'm making noises like that, then I'm gone, gone, gone, gone gone gone gonegonegonegone—

Someone's hand touches mine: Nagi. He has followed me after all.

He looks me in the eye. He doesn't say anything, because Nagi doesn't like to say things when silence is better. He looks me in the eye, and slowly turns the brassy doorknob.

"Thank you," I say. Alien words. Nagi doesn't even nod. He just waits for me to go in ahead of him. I do. My room is clean. It is always clean. It is a good thing, because if I left things on the floor, I would be stepping on them now. I can't see. Everything is hazy. I'm using short short sentences and even they don't make sense. I want to sit down and stay sitting until the world, the bus, comes to a halt. I want to be alone because I never am. I don't want to be alone because I always have been.

I wonder if this is what it's always like to feel, or if you get used to it. I wonder if it will always take this much for me to feel anything but snide. I wonder if I want it to take less. I don't like this, feeling. I don't want to be able to get here.

I must be sitting, because I'm not standing anymore. Nagi is looking at me—no, he's _regarding _me. So different, those two things. So very very very different.

Something clicks in my head. I really do sound crazy, when I think about the thoughts I've been thinking. I don't want to sound crazy. I don't want to _be _crazy. We all are, at Rosenkreuz.

But I'm not at Rosenkreuz, so wouldn't it be nice not to feel like I am anymore. Things get in my head and people get in my flesh, and they do to me exactly what Rosenkreuz did—not the same way, of course. They were never as crass (ha! a Brad word) as Weiß, and never as slippery as whoever was in my brain. Still. Rosenkreuz did what they did. They wrenched you open and spat on your insides.

I don't know know why I'm thinking of them. I don't want them to control me, any of them. I really and truly don't want to be crazy. I don't. So I stop it.

"I'm sorry, Nagi," I say. Nagi stares at me (regards me, if you want).

"Schu?" he says, which means, 'should I run in terror, fellow assassin?'

"I scared you."

He doesn't say anything for a long time.

"You don't have to lie," he says at last. You don't have to hide it, is what his mind says. His mind says, you didn't have to pretend you were okay with the gaping flesh wounds and the brain visits (which of course he remembered better than I did and therefor had more cause to worry about anyway) and then change your mind and scare me half to hell. Well. He doesn't say it quite that way. Nagi doesn't swear. But it was the gist.

"Haven't you heard, Nagi-kun? I _always _lie."

"Says who?" he says. He's thinking the answer before I say it, dreading it too. I shouldn't say it. It'll upset him.

"Weiß, for one," I say anyway. I sound so oblivious. Hah. Like I can't tell when the kid doesn't wanna hear something. Even if I weren't brain-scanner extraordinaire, that little pinched thing he does to his lip is cue enough.

From somewhere in my head comes a conscience (probably from someone else—they're not put off by my shields today). _You shouldn't have said it. And _you _of all people shouldn't feel so clever at the moment._

"Farf was here earlier," Nagi says, which is his way of saying, you're still an ass when you can't walk properly.

"Was he?" I say, which is my way of saying, I don't want to answer because I know you're right.

"He was worried," says Nagi. I don't know what he wants me to get from this.

"Okay," I say. "That's…reassuring, I guess. That someone gives a shit." Nagi glares at me. I'm screwing up. It's because of all the people in my brains, whom I can't really seem to block out and who really, really don't like me. That and I feel like I've been sadistically mutilated by a band of hormonally unbalanced justice freaks with serious shoulder chips. Oh wait.

Still. It's Nagi. The woundable one. Hormonal sadists aside, he's way more vulnerable than yours truly or Far or Crawford. And he _does _give a shit. Which gives him mighty bonus points in my book, and makes him pretty unusual beside. I know Far cares, but the list stops there, and it's damn short at collective two. Crawford couldn't care less if I were eaten by pirranhas. The fact that he came for me at all almost made me die right there in the basement. Although, knowing him, he probably cursed himself out the whole way there (politely, of course) for being stupid enough to do it.

But that's Brad, not Nagi. Right. Off that train of thought, into the present, please. I have to sigh.

"I know, Nagi-kun, I know—you care, right?" He glared at me accusingly. "You do, you do, I get it. I'm just…not all here, y'know? Cut me some slack and I'll remember your ginormous contributions to my quality of life."

Nagi's shoulders relaxed and he almost smiled. But there was still more bothering him than was making him happy. I was curious, and I could hardly help looking even without my curiosity.

_You're not okay, you're not okay, but Schu, Schu is _always _okay, what do I do? what do I do? Why are you in my head again? Can't you even stay out of my head? What's _wrong _with you?Is all of this Weiß? How could they make you this way?Who was in your mind? Who was in my mind?_ And everything in his mind is so stark with blood and terror.

And there was fear, awful fear. And I was so open that I really did _feel _for him. It was a rushing, knotting, writhing pain, worry and hatred and anger and tiredness, all picking at his soul like a razor on a vein. All picking at _me. _How could he stand there, look so calm and quiet, and have that inside? How on earth did he do it? He was affecting me, and for a minute I couldn't let go. I felt my face make a shape I didn't know, and I named it with this sudden thing I felt: pity.

"Nagi," I said, and I couldn't quite get my face to go back to normal. "Nagi, Nagi, it's okay." He looked at me (regarded), but instead of his usual nonexpression, there was a twinge of grief. I let go of his mind. I knew what it would cost me, but I leaned forward, caught his neck and pulled him to my eye level. Somehow I managed not to grimace as my whole body petitioned against me.

"Nagi," I said, and he looked outright shocked, "It. Is. Okay. They didn't do anything permanent. I'll be fine. We'll all be fine." He stared straight into my eyes as though I'd just thrown a puppy in front of a car.

"Then why did Farf kill Ouka?" I paused, to digest that, leaned back from him to see his face.

"What?" I said.

"He was talking about it. Last week. In his sleep. He said, it was his gun that shot, his arm, your aim, your push. Why did he shoot Ouka?"

_Dammit, Far. _

Because, Nagi, I ran into him. Stumbled.

Because, Nagi, I was out of ammo and I wanted to stop their attack.

Because, Nagi, I…

My hand slipped off his shoulder.

I tried to answer and nothing came out. I might have been a liar, but I couldn't lie to him. Not when he stared me down like I was a bug stuck with a pinfull of accusations. And I knew that while he stuck me with that question, it held a thousand more—not least, what had happened in the park? Why was there a parasitic mind suckering onto my brain when I woke up? _What was happening? _And so many damn awful more. None of them good questions. None of them good answers. Any chance I had of reassuring him had just evaporated.

Because, Nagi, I could have started, but that's where it would have stopped: Because, Nagi. Because…

Because…

…I don't know.

AN: This has got to be one of my angstier chapters of anything ever. (Well, not counting my early stuff, which was just horrific straight through.) I hope I'm not overdoing. The nice thing is, there is a plot, but my main drive is characters. I hope they manage to shine through even in this doleful little story. Oh well. R+R. Kye Syr, Dec. 12'04


	10. B: C

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Nine

by PenguinKye

October 12, 199X—4:15 PM

I knew that sooner or later, Weiß would come after us again. They had an impossible habit of turning themselves into the victims of every scenario, and then stabbing the "offenders" with crossbow darts. Omi in particular had been scalded by the accusation that he was a sadistic torturer, but now the burn would have scabbed over. All he would think of was that I had tipped the pot that burned him.

Knowing this, I knew we had to kill them. What Unmei had said unnerved me, and I saw Weiß as a distraction that we could not afford. They had to be eliminated from our list of troubles early on or concentration on the greater enemy would be compromised.

I caught Nagi as he left Schuldig's room. He appeared even more closed off than usual. When I tried to speak to him, he merely grunted a reply: something about death, I expect.

I had no time for this kind of tantrum.

"Nagi," I said. "We must kill Weiß."

I was pleased to see him look up at that.

"Sure," he said. "Let's go now." I frowned.

"We're not going into any situation without proper preparation."

"Let Farf out of his room. You'll be prepared then."

"Very amusing, Nagi. Do you know the hours of the most estimable assassin-sponsored flower shop in town?"

"Yes, sir."

"And today, they would be--?"

"They'll be closed at six."

"And it's now four thirty. Schuldig will not be accompanying us, obviously. However, I do not want to go as a force fewer than three. I shall contact Unmei about sending someone over."

"Schu gets a babysitter?"

"I suppose that is an almost accurate summary of my thoughts."

"He won't like it."

"He does, however, like you. This is why you will tell him."

There was a long, pregnant silence from Nagi. I had to look at him sternly and for many seconds for him to look up again.

"What is the problem, Nagi?" He held a breath and stuck his tongue thoughtfully against the gap of a canine and the tooth behind it. It was a pondering mannerism. It usually bore the worst of tidings. On the other hand, Nagi usually wouldn't reveal those tidings until he felt inclined; inquires would achieve nothing.

"Nothing," he said at last. "I'll tell him."

I was more or less satisfied by this.

"Tell Schuldig before you fetch Farfarello," I said. "Better yet—let us _both_ fetch Farfarello." Nagi nodded, and I went to my office.

My phone rang. The caller ID was a nonexistent number, which meant that it was either Eszett or someone shady and powerful who had somehow escaped Eszett—whether that meant Enemy or Friend I could not have said. Being the powerful Seer that she was, however, I was putting my money on Unmei.

"Yes?" I said.

"I will come myself," said Unmei. "I would like speak to your mindreader in person."

"Excellent," I said. "As long as it will not endanger you?"

"It will not," she said.

"We shall see you then, Madam. At eight o'clock, if it suits you."

"It would. I would like to speak to you as well, of other things. If they are, in fact, other things. Do I guess correctly that this appointment gives us time to talk?"

"You do, Unmei-sama."

"Good. Then I shall see you at your home in a few hours, Mr. Crawford."

She put the phone down first, and left the disconnecting buzz to ring in my ear. It continued to sizzle there, burrowing into my brain, as I set the phone into its cradle, sat down at my desk, and waited to think of something worth doing there.

After a few moments, I reached down to the drawer on my right. It slipped open, smooth; as always, I reveled in the desk's elegant blend of artistry and functionality. It, like everything I owned, was expensive because it was worth its price. I did not approve of flaws, when the money could be produced that would buy perfection. My suits were hand-tailored; my wine was hand-pressed; my desk was hand-built. It was not extravagance; it was quality.

I removed a brown leather notebook and slid the drawer shut with the back of my hand. I lay the book open before me, and without looking up, ghosted my fingers about my desk until they touched the barrel of a pen.

"October 12, 199X," I murmured, and wrote it down.

_No visions. _

I stopped after that brief sentence to consider.

_The length of this drought is a concern; my longest ever, prior to this, was no more than four days. This is the eighth consecutive day with not a whisper of foresight more than the two visions concerning Weiß. Those did me so little good—so much harm, even— that I wonder why they even came to me. And I begin to worry—perhaps even to fear. I have not yet announced the situation to my subordinates. At this time, if any have noticed (no sign of this, in point of fact), they most likely still believe it to be no more than a normal drought. I do not have them often, but my subordinates know they occur. It could even be that they believe I am being more than usually reticent.. If they have noticed._

_It would be no surprise if they have not.. It is not often that one of our number finds himself so thoroughly jeopardized as Schuldig managed to become. I still do not understand how he failed to notice the presence of the enemy in such close quarters. This is almost as worrying as my drought. As often as Schuldig allows personality to overwhelm good sense, he has never failed before. Only in the last fortnight has this been a pattern of behavior._

_Tonight, Nagi and Farfarello and I will remove the risk that is Weiß. Unmei will oversee Schuldig here. I called to ask for one of her associates, or subordinates. She offered to come herself, in part with the offer to converse. I hope that her conversation pieces have some relevance to either me or Schuldig. If an outside eye could provide me answers, I am heartily prepared to accept them._

_I am afraid that I feel some paranoia; it is possible that, as we confront Weiß this evening, I will be waiting all the while for Nagi to lose his telekenesis, or for Farfarello to feel pain._

I scanned my own words quickly, to see whether anything had gone unsaid. What I had written seemed suffiecient. It was perhaps a brief report, but it said all that I wished it to and many things that I did not.

I laid the book shut, replaced it in its drawer, and dropped the pen back into the penholder. The point met the metal base with a disheartened plink. For some reason the hollow sound drew out of me a sick feeling—a lump of dread clutching like a beetle's spiked legs at the base of my throat.

I ignored it. I pressed it away, smoothing out the legs of my pants and brushing an invisible dust speck from my blotter. If I made everything even enough, clean enough, perfect enough, the beetle in my throat would have to let go and fly away. As I began to check each pen in the holder for acceptably full cartridges, I wondered how much it would take to turn me into my father. I wondered, but I didn't stop my inspection.

_Too little_, a voice in my mind supplied. It caught me off guard and ignited my rage. With an angry swipe, I brushed it, the beetle of dread, and every single pen into the wastebasket.

When I left the room, I let the door slam a little.

---------------------------

PenguinKye

July 1, 2005

Uploaded September 2005

Hallo, everyone. I really appreciate the people who have been reading, so please, even if you haven't got anything to say, drop a review so I know who you are. Thanks for sticking with my slow-moving story. (When I reread the whole thing to put times and dates on it, I realized that the first 15 chapters or so all take place within a couple of days. I should retitle again: "One Incredibly Crappy Week for Schwarz in Five Thousand Chapters.")


	11. N: C

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Ten

by PenguinKye

October 12, 199X—5:10 PM

Unmei got here forty-five minutes after Crawford called her. I saw her park her car (which was wierdly mundane; she's never seemed like a person who would have a car) beneath my window, swinging the keys as she stepped up to the door. She was unworried. She just left it there, she, a Talent who laughed in the face of Eszett—she was unafraid to park her car right in front of Eszett's favorite pets' house, as though she were a normal visitor. As though we _had_ visitors.

The thing about her was that she could do that, and it wouldn't matter, because she was strong enough to fight them even if they decided to acknowledge her presence. And for the most part, they found it easier…safer…to pretend she wasn't there at all.

Unmei scared me.

I went to Brad's office and knocked on the door (soft, so he wouldn't jump out and bite me). There was no answer. Another knock, a little louder: nothing. I wandered away from his door and wove to the kitchen. Not there. To the living room, such as it was. Not there. As dangerous as it was, to the bathroom.

I knocked, and there was a growl of response.

"Crawford?" I said.

"What?" he asked sharply. No, no, no. Crawfish mode. I didn't want to deal with it, I didn't want to hear it. I was still full to the brim with adrenaline and apprehension from Schu, and Crawfish would push me over the edge.

I just hoped he wouldn't do it until I had Weiß to take it out on.

"Unmei," I told Crawford stiffly, and started my retreat. Before I'd taken more than two steps, the door was flung open, and Crawford stood there, fully clothed, unhurried. There was no toilet flush. There was no sign of bandaids. I hadn't even heard the sink running. So what had he been doing in there at all?

"Where?" he said brusquely.

"On the stairs," I told him. He brushed by me and opened the front door with irritating style. I could still feel his bad mood pushing in around me, but he stood at the door as the perfect host, oozing calm and amused detachment.

I hated Crawford so much of the time.

Unmei, on the other hand, scared me, but I loved her. Not in person, she always sounded so distant, and she was—her power was incredible. It separated her from other people by its own force. But her physical presence was not the inaccessible, cold, aweing thing her power was. She was as variable as a chameleon. Even though you could always feel the strength beneath the surface, she switched from happy to formal to sexy to casual to angry, in constant, dizzying motion. You never knew what kind of person would be meeting you. You just always knew that it was better not to piss her off.

She was amazing.

I wondered how long it would take Schuldig to notice that she was a babysitter. I remembered that I was supposed to have told him already.

I felt a little sick.

She walked up the stairs and I saw her, unfolding eight inches at a time: hair, not quite dead black (there was some of that fuzzy brown in it) pulled into a last-minute knot at the back of her head; face, round but angled, with keen curved eyes and that precognitive smile that told you she _did _know more than you; only a few centimeters taller than me, not frighteningly thin, but still slender in that way Japanese women are when they don't eat too much Western food. I might have romanticized her, but it was more likely that she really was as impossible as she seemed.

If I did romanticize, I didn't care, because it was keeping me collected.

"Crawford-san," she said. Her voice was soft, but authority thrummed beneath it. "Naoe-kun." She bowed to each of us in turn, slipping out of her shoes at the same time.

"I will speak to you," she said to Crawford. "As you requested. And then I will see your mindreader."

_Your_. I noticed this, as I always did. Schu and Farf had never met Unmei in person, but I had met her and all of her people many times. I think Crawford brought me because I could be counted on to behave. In any case, whenever I was around for a conversation between Unmei and Crawford, I heard that _your. _She didn't use it for anyone but Schuldig, and it always made me wary.

Talents, especially telepaths and foreseers, rarely say anything that particular without meaning it. Subtlety of language is something they appreciate.

"And then we shall see to Farfarello," Crawford addressed me. He and Unmei seemed to have dismissed me, and had already made their way to Crawford's office door. I nodded, and they disappeared.

I padded vaguely after them, not sure of what I was supposed to do until they were through.

I thought perhaps that I should just do my duty and tell Schu. The thought made me balk.

In my head appeared a picture, a picture that seemed to nail itself to my gut and pound there. Schu, looking at me, at such a loss that he, the great Loquacious one, couldn't do anything but stare. Schu looking at me, openmouthed and empty of inspiration. His hand slipping away, his self slipping with it, pulling back for somewhere safe to lie. His eyes, tired dark and wide with alarm, his face, bruised, the great unknown and the greatest familiarity.

Maybe I owed it at least to put him at ease. As much as I could. With a breath and a swallow, I stepped forward.

I pushed softly on Schu's door and peered in. He was lying on his stomach, one arm sqashed under his chest, the other flung out over the side of his bed. His feet hung out from under his blanket, which seemed to have puddled around his knees. He was obviously deeply asleep. I was enormously relieved and horribly disappointed at the same time.

Because as uncomfortable as talking to him would have been, not talking was hurting me like spears.

Because I might have been right; he might have been lying. There might have been something ugly happening under the surface. But I made it worse, and I wanted to make this—this sudden, all-consuming fear—die down enough for me to walk without shaking.

But I couldn't wake him up for my sake.

I shut the door again, and would have gone somewhere, _anywhere_ else—but Crawford's office was just across the hall and down a room. I could hear the hushed conversation behind the door.

I didn't mean to do it, but my feet kind of pulled me forward, and I found my cheek pressed against the door. No. Not my cheek. My ear.

"—could be—source…drought, Mis—Crawf—," said Unmei's voice. It slipped in and out of hearing with the emphasis of her words.

Crawford's deeper voice was easier to hear. It rolled through the door smooth as cream.

"Anxiety? I don't see—The only…makes me anxious is drought itself."

For a moment I thought he meant a regular drought, with water, and I thought, it just rained the other day. And then my mind went dumb for a moment and I understood all at once that he was talking about his talent. A final kick to the stunned dog Nagi.

"What ab—….Schuldig?" Unmei said softly. There was a deep pause. I tried to think of when Crawford had last said that he had Seen something. Not just implied, but _said. _He had warned Schu about Weiß, so just yesterday morning, early. How was that a drought?

"I don't know," said Crawford. I jumped, then realized he was talking to Unmei. "I'm unaccustom—letting concerns…subordinates dictate…talent.

"But…think there's…wrong…him?" said Unmei. I wished I could hear better.

"Yes. His behaviour is ab--mal." Ab-mal? Abnormal? Yes, of course Schu's behaviour was abnormal. I wondered if I should have told Crawford about more than the other person in our heads.

"…think…connected? …eight days…longest --out ever." Eight days. They were still talking about Crawford, weren't they? I knew he had Seen yesterday, but maybe the two visions about Weiß were some of the only ones. Not a complete drought, then. Just much dryer than usual?

"How could it be? …not so attached to subordinate."

"In any…your Schu--must be…outside force."

"Still don't think….just wearing out?"

"—see. Purpose of my…here. We will talk. But your…related perhaps. From force… --r from…motions." I pulled away from the door as silently as I could, heart pounding, before Crawford could respond.

I knew about Schu being messed up, of course. I knew more about Schu being messed up than anyone. But I hadn't known that Crawford was in a drought. Eight days…even if it was a dry spell, and not entirely visionless, that was long.

That had to be the longest he'd ever had in his life.

The thought of it was enough to freeze me. If that weren't enough, he had called on Unmei, about Schu and himself. That meant he was worried. Really worried. And if Brad Crawford was worried, I should probably have been getting ready for something truly awful. Not that I wasn't already.

I slunk to my room, and stared into the mirror, trying to force my face to look less horrified. I had probably only been there ten minutes, and I was still making faces at myself, when Crawford appeared spontaneously behind me and said in an awful voice:

"We must get Farfarello."

It was like something from a slasher movie, except that it was frightening. I jumped, my face frozen in my last fishy grimace, and heard a shriek like a strangled kangaroo come out of my throat.

"Nagi?"

I flattened out my expression and tried to pretend it hadn't happened.

"Yes?" Exactly the way to keep your cool. Look like a fish under the knife and make dying Australian mammal noises.

Crawford looked at me strangely, shook his head, and turned away.

"Come," he said. "We have things to do."

We didn't really. We just were going to kill Weiß. And at that moment it occurred to me : I wasn't the only desperate one. We were killing Weiß because we didn't know what else to do.

PenguinKye

July 4, 2005

November 8, 2005: Aaaarg! Goodbye, stats. I loved you...Sorry about the lack of updates, everyone. I'm experiencing the excitement known as The First Term At College, and my particular college is known for the kicking of ass when it comes to the workload. I actually have up to...um...fifteen done. I'll try to get those up as quickly as possible. Cheers, love, etc. PK


	12. F: B

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Eleven

by PenguinKye

October 12, 199X—5:45 PM

Think of blood a little at a time, and it unrolls like carpet, straight smooth demanding. Dripping wet pearls, count them up, perfect and red like the dead sun. Rapture, rapture to see a star die—I wish for that ecstasy. It is red and roiling, like a breaking dying clutching heart.

Stars and blood, light and life, and everyone thinks they're so beautiful, hm? Dying is better. Dead is bad, bad, bad, because then there is nothing. Nothing is sickness. Nothing is empty. Nothing is the enemy. But dying, artistic, violent, unbound is better than living. Watch it dance and wail, a beautiful musical, oh look at the passion hidden, what they pushed away when they thought they'd live forever. Blood runs faster outside the cage. Blood jumps higher when bodies aren't closed.

I like to make it free.

I can see blood in my eyes, I can braid it in my mind, sweeping down the throat and onto the floor, the head the heart the hair the blood. I see twirly mixy rivulets, a horserace of red raindrops rushing to lower ground. Angering me, because I can't make it turn back. It doesn't know that that's where you drown, that dead comes after dying, even though I want it to _stay away_.

The body eats itself, not letting me hold onto dying. It pumps out life from its stupid, mindless, terrible heart. Damn the organ that tries to keep it living, so it pushes life away in spurts of fading possibility.

The sun will eat itself. No one else will have to raise a knife. It will reach out a hand of fire and plunge dig tear into its burning own chest and rip out its burning own heart. I want to watch it die, the suicide of life. I will live forever to see it burn into dusk. I will stand sentinel, because then the Earth will freeze. Freezing is weakness, numbness, thoughtless, slow melting oblivion. It is not dying like dying is beautiful.

I will live forever so that when the sun eats its heart, I can save everyone from dying frozen coward pointless death. I will give them real dying. I will give them fountains, rivers, oceans of shrieking, piercing, brilliant dying. They will wonder at me, for I shall bring them glory.

I will live forever to show others how to die.

There is a light breaking my reverie. There is a light ruining my solitude.

There is a claw on my door. There is a mover's face behind it. I must hiss, a snake, to keep them away, to bewitch the door into closing and the claw into snapping off. But they do not listen, the door and the claw

(and the mover flinches)

because they never do, they just do each others' will and drag me from my perfect thinkings. They speak.

They want me to come with them, obey, to do something I don't see at first, that makes me angry, angry. And then they say, "Weiß, for Schuldig," and then I scream because those words are bliss.

I will leave with them, go with them ,and sing to only myself to show my enemy, sick sweet dead, how to die better than they ever lived. I reach behind me and feel a promise, leather and steel, so sharp it cuts. Blood runs, a promise sealed.

I shall bring them glory.

PenguinKye

July 3, 2005

Notes: (November 13, 2005) I can tell you that I felt my brain explode when I wrote this…I realize that Farf's insane, and this is a good reason not to write in-depth POVs for him. But he does have a psychotic kind of logic that's a little too amusing to figure out. Thanks again to quietladybirman for her very kind review (I hope you enjoyed this chapter ), and for everyone, new and old, who stopped in to read chapter 11. (I love stats. They are just so fun.)


	13. S: C

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Twelve

by PenguinKye

October 12, 199X—6:10 PM

I was not so bad at waking up this time, until I remembered Nagi. I said, "Ug," and flipped onto my stomach to suffocate myself with a pillow.

Then someone said, "Hello, Schuldig," and I flipped back again without meaning to.

"Who're you?" I said, or something like it. Then I noticed that whoever it was was an utterly gorgeous woman—who was somehow balancing very casual clothes with a strong air of dignity and power. Not that I usually liked dignity. Just power. But when I saw her I wondered if I just didn't like dignity because I couldn't pull casual off at the same time.

She was definitely more than trying—she was succeeding. I lounged, feeling impressed for a few moments, and then I said, "So _who _are you?"

"I am called Unmei," she said, and for a crazy minute I thought I'd gone totally insane—hot chick appears at a delirious guy's bedside and calls herself fate? Who wouldn't wonder? But I knew that name, and it fit this woman, even though Brad had never mentioned that she was a babe. A dangerous babe, sure, but a babe.

"You're the uncatchable," I said. It came out fuzzy, but Unmei seemed to get the drift. She smiled serenely, clashing with the messy room around her and making me feel like she should be wearing something old and traditional and extremely expensive.

"You're the incorrigible," she said smoothly. I laughed.

"I don't know about that," I said. "I feel pretty well corriged just now."

"They haven't got you yet," she said, and something about that sucked the smile right off my face.

"Do you expect them too?" I said. She looked me in the eye. This made the hotness go away pretty much altogether—I mean, it was there, but I sure as hell wasn't thinking about it—and get replaced by a feeling of what could be called gut-wrenching fear.

"I don't know," she said at last. "You see, we 'uncatchables' have, so far, no idea what is happening to you." That gave another sharp yank to my unhappy insides.

"What do you mean, happening to me? All that's _happened_ is that I screwed up and got mauled by Weiß." That was a lie, I knew it was. Nagi knew better, and so did Far, even if I didn't want to.

"Mr Crawford called me," Unmei said. Her voice was getting quiet in a way that made me feel like shrinking out of sight. "He told me your mind had a parasite." Oh. So that was why she was here. I hardly remembered a thing, but Nagi had told me, when he noticed that I didn't know a thing ten minutes later. He'd looked like he was going to vomit at me.

"You know," I said, sounding like I was trying to be casual and failing. (Which meant I now couldn't handle casual _or _dignified.) "You know, you are not very good at making a person feel anything but hysterically afraid."

"I am sorry," she said gently, and put a hand to my arm. "I mean to talk with you, not frighten you." She reached behind me suddenly and pushed my pillows to the wall. She pushed me to the wall too, without my doing anything. This lady was stronger than she looked.

"I hope you can sit more comfortably now," she said. I nodded, dumb. She gave me a long look and continued, "I know you do not wish to think of ugly things, Schuldig, but for my sake and yours and for all of your associates', you must."

"There's nothing wrong with me," I said. My mouth was dry. She handed me a water bottle. I stuck it in my mouth so I wouldn't have to talk.

"Tell me what it felt like," she said, slowly, gently. The water disappeared—I had set it down, of all the stupid things! My mouth had opened. I was going to talk? I remembered vaguely, as I began to speak, that one reason Unmei was uncatchable was that she had a secondary talent. She was a Compeller. She could get other people, even other talents, to do or say what she asked them to.

I was a bit outraged about this, but it didn't stop me talking.

"What?" I said. My voice sounded strange.

"The parasite," said Unmei. Her hand was still on my arm, its touch deliberate and intended to calm. I didn't like being controlled that way, but I couldn't seem to pull away.

"Didn't Brad tell you? I can't remember," I said.

"That's what you told him," said Unmei.

"It was true," I told her, affronted. "I don't remember anything except that…there was something in me besides me."

"You will remember," said Unmei. She gripped my arm more tightly and said again, "You will remember the parasite. You will tell me what was in your mind." She said it over and over, until it became a chant, and I felt it gaining power every time she said it. Damn Compellers. I knew she'd get it out of me sooner or later. I hated being controlled that way. Or in any way, I guess.

Maybe ten minutes went by, and at some point I realized that I remembered as well as I was going to. Pretty damn well, I was displeased to figure out. Unmei figured it out too, because her grip on my arm relaxed, and she said, "Tell me what happened, Schuldig." Before I could think about it twice, I had begun to speak.

"I didn't know it was there when I woke up," I said. "I only felt-" I gestured clumsily at myself "-the Weiß stuff. I was talking to Nagi, and that was okay, but then there was this feeling—he would say something, and I'd have this half a thought. I mean, I didn't know what I was thinking really, but I could _feel_ the thoughts, and they were venom. I think it was about Nagi." I looked into Unmei's face and she looked back, not moving an eyelash. "It wasn't something I would feel about Nagi," I said, still staring. "I didn't know what it meant. I didn't like it. And then, I felt…like I was in a memory?"

"A memory of what, Schuldig?"

"The first time I met Nagi…I mean, the first time I looked inside. I didn't—like him as much then. I might have been vicious about it. But I couldn't figure out why I was remembering that, and all at once Nagi started going off on me about being in his head, but I didn't know I was there. And then--"

Unmei watched me patiently. I struggled to explain.

"All those thoughts about him that I could catch all the way, they peeled off of my mind—like a leech or something. And then Nagi said it was in his head, but it wasn't me, and I had got to get it out. It tried to get back inside my head. It nearly managed. I felt it, like it had claws that were digging in for a good hold."

I stopped again, to gather myself. Unmei said, sounding unfairly musical, "Tell me the rest." I glared a bit and held my tongue for a few long seconds, until Unmei's order forced me to speak.

"I tossed it off," I said, "and it was out of Nagi's head, too. And there was this silence, and then it was back. It got in like there was nothing easier. It…_laughed_ at me. I mean, inside my head. It burrowed down deep, and it was powerful all of the sudden, like it had strength it had forgotten all about. And it told me that it would never leave me alone, and it hit me—I mean, mentally, _hard_. I had to sleep for hours to get rid of that headache. It's probably what made me forget to begin with. I think it's coming back."

"The headache, I hope?" Unmei asked, looking alarmed for about a second.

"Yeah," I said. "Headache. Not the…thing." She looked more satisfied. I hoped that she was done with me.

"Could you hear a voice with the taunts?" she asked at once. Of course she wasn't done. Groan. Sigh.

"Yes," I said. "I think so. I think it sounded….like a man. Maybe. It was twisty. And it hurt too much to remember right."

"That is all right," she told me. "I only have a few more questions, Schuldig. Then you can rest." I was ready to be annoyed that she thought I needed rest, but then I realized that she was right. I was leaning heavily against the pillows, although when she'd first begun her little Compelling I'd been sitting up practically on my own. I wondered if I was imagining that it was hard to breathe.

"Good," I said. I hadn't meant to say it.

"Did the creature in your mind ever enter it before this morning?" she asked. I was about to say, No, of course not—I would have noticed, don't you think?

Far and Nagi knew. Far and Nagi were too damn clever. My stomach twisted.

"Yes," I said. "Since Ouka Takatori." Shit. I wasn't supposed to mention that to anyone—probably not even to Unmei. But Unmei smiled.

"I thought it had been one of you," she said. "It's a pity it was the girl. She did no harm. But it has weakened her father, and her father is one of the bonds between you and Eszett. It's better that he be broken. What happened with Ouka?"

I told her, as best I could, and then I told her about the buzzing and the shriek that had ruined me for Weiß—had that really only been yesterday morning?—and how I hadn't been able to read them until they were on top of me, with their swords in me.

When I finished I could see that Unmei was worried, and it frazzled her hair in a way that made her look beautiful in an almost normal way. But her face smoothed out in an instant (she was good at smooth as well as dignified and casual), and she didn't say anything to cure my apprehension.

She let go of my arm, and I felt like something that had been plugged into me had been yanked out.

"I have said nothing to make you less afraid, have I?" she said, almost ruefully.

"Not really," I said. "But it would have been worse if you'd let Brad come in." Unmei looked surprised.

"Mr Crawford told me that Nagi had informed you," she said. I felt positively sick.

"Told me what?" I asked hoarsely.

"They have all three gone to kill the ones who caught you. They have gone to seek revenge against Weiß. That is why I am here."

I groaned and sank back even further in my bed.

"They went without me," I said. "And I really wanted to kill those bitches. And they left me a _babysitter_." Unmei smiled, with that look that drove you crazy.

"They'll be all right, won't they?" I said. "You can see them, can't you?"

Unmei laughed and put a hand by my ear.

"They will be all right, whatever surprises might occur," she said.

"Good," I said. "That means I can get Nagi back for _neglecting_ to mention it."

She tugged at my hair in a way that made me think of a dog's mistress tugging on its ear. "You have done well. You have told me everything I have asked you for. I have long looked forward to meeting you, Schuldig. I have not been disappointed. Now, rest."

All at once I felt all of the pains in my body, from the returning headache to the the ache through my shoulder to the sharp pounding in my wrists. She seemed nice, I thought, but Unmei pulled forward the worst of a person without even thinking about it. Even if she wasn't Eszett, there was no way she could be considered a good guy.

That was all I thought, before she reached down and pulled my blanket up—I made some wierdo noise about it—and figured out that there was no way for me to stay awake a single minute longer.

PenguinKye

July 10, 2005

READ AND REVIEW. FOR GOODNESS' SAKE.

Sorry about the long wait! I will try to get to more of this story. College, life and other things have gotten in my way before now.


	14. N: D

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Thirteen

by PenguinKye

October 12, 199X 7:00 PM

We got in the way we always get in, which is, I open doors and we sneak through them. I felt like we were developing a pattern with Weiß: open, creep, go to the basement, throw things around, leave. But we only got as far as creeping when we knew there was something wrong. Crawford was poised (poised, I guess, would be the thing he was) at the top of their silly concrete spiral stairs, and up floated the voice.

It was Omi Tsukiyono, which worked, because I hated him to begin with, so he might as well be the bearer of bad news. It was laughing. They all were, but he was laughing and trying to talk at the same time. It made him sound drunk.

It took a minute, but I did realize that it was being drunk that made him sound drunk. So he wasn't such a good little boy after all. He was a really naughty boy. They'd been closed for, what, an hour? Which I figured out more when he started talking. Up came his voice. It said:

"Heeh heehh…dammit dammit Ken should be shere becawsh…becawsh…victory over th' DARK BEESHTS, that's what becawsh."

"We dinit' _hunt_ t'day, OmiOmiOmi," said Kudou's voice. "You…rr confuzzed."

"NO NO!" said Tsukiyono fiercely. "The ROACHEES…WILL NOT…CUBBACK…come back. Ack. Roach."

"Shutup." Oh the honorable leader. Who knew he'd talk better hammered than sober? "You makemy headhurtsoshutup."That was pretty much my thought. They kept talking, but none of us much noticed because of what Tsukiyono had said.

Ken. Hidaka. Currently. Not. Present.

"Anyway?" I asked, and even though it was a whisper it sounded like a scream without Schuldig to pass messages.

There was this pause from Crawford that I hated, since at any moment they might stop slurring in the basement, notice us and cut us to bits while Crawford made up his mind.

Kudou screamed because Tsukiyono had put beer-covered ice down his shirt. Then he fell off the couch and started writhing on the floor.

Crawford, I had to amend, could take his time for once without us getting dead.

"Yes. Go," Crawford breathed, just to screw with my amendment.

Farf grinned a little. A lot. I tried to figure out whether I should put Crawford between me and Farf or me between Farf and Crawford. Before I could decide, Crawford pushed me forward.

"You first," he hissed.

Oh thanks, I thought.

If they hadn't been totally wasted, Weiß would have noticed that I was walking down their stairs, standing behind their couch, purveying Kudou's writhing and Fujimiya's glowering and Tsukiyono's hysterical tooth-setting laughter.

"HELMEUP!" bellowed Kudou.

"Getchurself up," growled Fujimiya. Tsukiyono seemed to have passed out from laughing too long without breathing.

"I'll help you get up," I said quietly, and even in their stupors, Fuyimiya and Kudou went still and looked straight at me. Tsukiyono was in a different place, so by the time he managed to _find_ 'up', Youji Kudou and the ceiling had bonded, and Fujimiya was lurching to his feet with a shout. His sword had appeared miraculously from under a sofa cushion.

This was a man with no life.

He probably would have drawn it to cut me in half or something, like he was in some lame samurai anime, but Crawford said, "Come now, young man. I think you'll find that _I _am going to kill you." So Crawford it disgusted me.

Meanwhile, Farfarello performed a circus-worthy springing leap from the stairs to the back of the sofa and was giving a full-on crazy one-eyed glare to a dazed and really unhappy-looking Tsukiyono. I had a vision of what Farf would want to do to _him_ and I decided to pretend I was elsewhere.

I sat down next to Kudou, who was awake but disoriented.

"Why..shoo…lil…tiny…bashard…" he muttered. It was possible that the jolt to his head had taken the buzz off his drunkenness. He sort of lunged at me and I looked at him and he froze in mid-lunge.

"Why do you say those things?" I asked. He stared at me.

"The _hell_?" he demanded.

"Tsukiyono almost killed him, but I bet the words were yours," I said. He squinted for a longish time about that one before he started, looking enlightened (using that word really loosely).

"Wha, yer little murdring friend?" he asked. I wondered who the hell else I would be talking about, and why that was such a strange idea.

"Yes."

"Some shit...flawed something."

"What?"

"Sure I talked ta him…but he kept spouting this crazy crap. Hey, listen to the effin' aliter-alitertitation." He was silent for about four seconds. "So are you killing me or something?"

"You kill yourself."

"Huh?"

"I feel your lungs in my hands."

"…Gross."

"I feel them to crush them, cell by cell, tube by tube, like pink bubble wrap inside a box." I was speaking quietly. I always do, but I can hear it, and I know Crawford can hear it—the difference when I am angry. Kudou must have heard it too. He was starting to looked frightened.

"Shit…you are way freaking eviler than us," he said. Was it possible that he was almost amusing when he was drunk?

"But they aren't the right color, Youji Kudou," I said. "You've put so many diseases and poisons inside yourself that the only dark beasts you have to fear are the ones you put between your lips."

"Um…kay. So're ya gon kill me, ya freakin' freak?" I pinned him with my gaze and he went pale and slippery like butter left in the heat.

"All I have to do…is push a little harder." I was blind now to whatever it was that Farf and Crawford were doing. I was slipping deep into my favorite part of my talent, feeling the infintesimal: viruses and bacteria itching to swarm and kill, lungs and liver fading and warping, blackened by abuse. I pressed in on weakened organs, and Kudou gasped and curled in agony, like something small and wet stung with alcohol. I nudged at diseases and opened paths for them, helping them speed up and up and up, until they coursed through his body and wrought their destruction at hundreds of times the normal speed. His immuities were pinioned beneath my grip.

Writhing in drunkenness was not in the same _kingdom_ as writhing in agony.

I sat quietly, working my will and watching as Youji Kudou got his comeuppance. Every foolish thing he had done was now working against him. All it took was faith and trust…and a little bit of revenge-driven telekenesis.

"Thank you," I said as Kudou sobbed and panted, and whispered, close to his ear, "Without the screaming, it  
wouldn't really be revenge."

----------------------------------------------

NOTES:

Haha…yeah, as much as I like, my Nagi, he's a creepy little kid, isn't he? I think these are what we call anger management issues. Sorry about how INCREDIBLY short this chapter is. I got to this point and realized I needed a POV change. I promise to put 14 up really soon after this one. ;;

Oh, by the way—I got this body-controlling Nagi power from his resurrection of Tot. How he was able to do that was never really explained in the series (at least, not in the first one, and that's all I've seen), so I decided I was allowed to mess with it—and turn it to the opposite purpose. I think that Nagi is turning out as the most powerful part of Schwarz in this fic. 0o

Happy Valentine's Day! (> )


	15. B: D

A Sense of Dark

Chapter Fourteen

by PenguinKye

October 12, 199X 7:20 P.M.

Ran Fujimiya, the fool with the sword, was exactly as easy to dispatch as I had guessed; in other terms, after a few drunken, misguided swings, his hands, wrapped around the hilt, were wrapped in my hand. He uttered some unmentionably foul language, so I put forth a hand to silence him. I put it around his throat, and after a minute or two of bulge-eyed, incredulous wheezing, he dropped like a stone to the floor. Mission very much accomplished. For a brief and frivolous moment, I felt as though I were one of the Shinsengumi, and these drunk, arrogant satires of heroism were Choshu samurai who had been too sure of their security at the Ikeda Inn.

The ease of it made me sigh, because if it weren't for Farfarello's…unique quirks when it came to murder, we could have done all four of them in the night we had come to retrieve Schuldig.

This, of course, made me think to inspect Farfarello's progress, and after a cursory glance at Fujimiya, who was blue and truly dead, I turned to the corner where Omi Tsukiyono, or Mamoru Takatori, or whatever the hell his name was, was currently trapped.

Farfarello, of course, was doing something extremely violent, and Omi/Mamoru was screaming his little head off. I decided that Farfarello had the situation well in hand.

Apparently Nagi did as well, because he was sitting with his legs tucked in, staring at a vocal and squirming Youji Kudou. I couldn't see what Nagi was doing to him, exactly, but it was probably as unpleasant as what Farfarello was at this moment doing with his fingernails.

Nagi leaned over and whispered something in Kudou's ear, his face vicious. This was a mistake; the Weiß tensed, and one of his arms shot, quick and jerky, at Nagi's face. It dragged him to the floor by his hair and said something in reply, something that made Nagi flinch. Nagi pulled back, catching Kudou's nails across his face. His face was enraged now, and his eyes were red almost to the center. He bared his teeth and I could see him push with his mind. Kudou screamed, curled, slumped, and was still.

I leapt over the sofa, seeing Nagi sway, but I was too late to catch him before he hit the floor.

I checked once again to see that Farfarello was diverted, and then lifted the lids of Nagi's eyes. They stared past me, unseeing, and as red as a gaping wound. What he had done had to have been incredibly difficult; this was the first time I had ever seen him driven unconcious by his efforts. At the least, it was the first time since his talent had been trained.

A piercing shriek emanated from the corner, and Farfarello chuckled.

"Farfarello, have done with it," I snapped. He glowered back over his shoulder, and for a disconcerting long moment, our eyes were locked. At last he shrugged, snarled, and his hand flashed against Omi/Mamoru's throat. The boy whimpered and was silenced.

Our boy was silent too. I checked for his pulse, pressing my fingers beneath his jaw. His heart was beating. His skin was cold.

I picked Nagi up and considered tossing him over one shoulder, but I thought perhaps that enough blood had travelled to his head for one night. Instead I carried him in both arms, trying to avoid seeing him. I could already feel him, boneless and lighter even than he looked, and if I'd had to look at such uncontrolled, undisguised weakness it would have made me sick.

I took a glance around the room and was overwhelmed by the conviction that we should have waited until they were all here.

It wasn't a vision, but it was the closest thing I'd had all day. Wonderful, I thought, feeling as though I had ingested an entire lemon, wait until _after_ they're lying in pieces across the floor to give me a pointer.

"Hurry, Farfarello," I said, and he dragged his eyes from his victim with only a tinge of regret. He _wanted_ to leave.

Animal instinct did not secure me from my concern.

We moved more quickly than usual on our way to our hidden car. I deposited Nagi, still senseless, in the front seat and made certain that the doors were locked around Farfarello in the back. Perhaps I drove too fast, but so did many people, because it was October and the sun was gone by seven o'clock. They were anxious to be at home, I suppose.

I merely wanted to be somewhere where I would not be caught. I thought it a minor miracle that Schwarz's collective dwelling had not yet been discovered, by one enemy or another. It was not that we were either unskilled at covering our trail, or that our foes were much to cause fear—but there were a great number of them, and statistically, one ought someday to find out where we were.

We reached our destination without incident (and I was looking for tails). I carried Nagi up the stairs and Farfarello followed, subdued as he sometimes was after a kill. I had just begun to worry about opening the door when it opened itself, Unmei behind it.

"Come in, Mr. Crawford," she said, as though it were her home. We did go in. I deposited Nagi in his room. Before I left, I glanced at his cheek, where Youji Kudou's nails had cut him—the last stand of the Choshu. Little dotted lines of blood, three of them, rose nearly invisibly from his eye to his mouth.. Surely the blood was dressing enough.

He was sweating a little. I covered him with a blanket and left the door ajar.

Farfarello stalked past me, no doubt to nurse the mirth of murder in his room. I would leave him be at least until the next afternoon.

"Madam," I said, when Unmei and I were alone. "Is there any news for me?"

She told me what there was to tell, and then glanced, unhurried and piercing, around the room. When her gaze slid back to me, she pressed that same gaze into my eyes, and then pressed her lips to my neck, long and slow. Her breath warmed my skin, but her touch made me cold. She straightened, and putting a hand to my face, said, "I will speak to you soon, Brad Crawford."

Then she turned around and left with neither a backwards glance nor a final goodbye, and shut the door behind her. I stood for a long time, alone in the middle of the room. Then I realized I couldn't stand forever, and I looked for a place where I wouldn't have to.


	16. H: B

A Sense of Dark

by PenguinKye

Chapter 15

October 12, 199X 9:20 P.M.

I brought him back, a little walk of the body, and though I reckon him as not the most emotionally dependant of men, he was not cracking a smile within at the sight that greeted our most usual eyes. He would have been sick if he hadn't been me, and we would have had endless troubles from old coppers then. So what of it, I kept his dinner down and he kept up a holler in our head. Whoever would have known he'd raise such noises at the timely deaths of such foolish people. I had not sussed him as a foolish person, but when he wept inside and I stopped him from the outs, I had just cause to wonder, my deary dears.

I had to whisper things about it right into his brains, poor lovey, and what terrible things they were! And all I told him made him sick, and all I told him made him angry, until we had to rush rush, rush away, so as to not leave a stain on the carpet for the coppers.

When he was well, it was but his stomach as was well, for there in unwellness his mind and blood did tarry, until we were as it were in a tizzy and a fix. What else for it but revenge? I knew he'd like revenge, and so he told me, and all of the wonderment of almost finding me there was nothing at all, because there was duty after all, chums, duty after all! Who minds a ghost of a thing when there's a duty to be dutifully done? Who can get up in a morning if there is no duty lying by to hit us over the head?

Or not, if we haven't got any head.

Why, what did they do when there was no duty to do it to? Why, they lay about as layabouts, my, my! And how do we end when we lie about? we die about! And that is all, my dearies, and he knew that lying about they had died about, and he was to learn from a mistake like that, learn everything, every lesson, perfectly. Learn to do your duty, deary, or pay dearly.

He was always the cleverest, wasn't he, not that they paid a moment's mind. He was always there in the quiet, thinking thoughts and things. Now they couldn't pay a moment's mind and he could think all the thoughts he liked, and no one to tell him to think otherwise, or worse, act. He would act in the perfect time, the ideal time, the time he arranged and deranged and decided. He would fail, but he would play a pretty battle for me, and then I could stab thine enemies in the back as he held a knife to their throats.

I brought myself and him to a comfortable place and didn't let anyone know who I was playing at, so they let us in without a breath of suspicion, not a word to the coppers, how foolish, isn't it? I want to laugh, always, because humans are so trite, so easy, but I must hold it in and recollect that without them I would not have much to do.

He didn't want to remember, deary! He wanted to forget the fallen and dive into unmemory, what a weak thing as shock and awful. What a delicious feeling, the shudder of a mind when you press against it lightly or break into it, harsh abandon. Focus, I wanted focus, deary, so I pushed, and freckles of memory rose, first the distant and then the near, and then he cried and shook and came dangerously close to understanding. I let him go so far, and snatched it away when he reached futher. It was like rolling a ball back and forth against the far side of the pool table, it was idle, and lazy, and somehow entertaining.

I pushed him far enough for him to remember revenge.

In one of his almost conscious moments he asked me the universal question. "Why," of course.

While he wondered I whiled away thinking of my other plaything, though he's so much more than a game that I almost had to take back the thought of play. Pretty thing, really, but the satisfaction to be gained from him is more than mere prettiness. If I weren't what I am I would be eaten alive by my own hatred. Though if I weren't what I am I would have no reason for hate. It's a paradox, isn't it? If I weren't what I was I wouldn't have become what I am. If they hadn't been what they had been, they wouldn't have become what they were, and now I wouldn't have to make them what they will be. If they hadn't done what they did, I wouldn't be what I am, and I would have no way of getting them back for it—but then, I maybe wouldn't have anything to get them back for. They would be brothers for their pains if only they hadn't been the cause of mine. It's a mad world.

I looked through him, at the unlit little room, the almost ludicrous glove on the built-in shelf (ludicrous if it hadn't worked, ludicrous for being alone). Out the window, only a barrier if you were put off by things like matter. Occasionally that kick of stubborn intelligence belied below a boring brain, pleasing me, annoying me.

Intelligence to distract, not destroy. All I wanted, all I needed, what a pawn, you silly, sad little thing.

How will Schwarz die? I enjoyed the way they killed Weiß, especially Nagi's work. Vicious, vengeful, skillful, perfectly executed, so to speak. That, that, that is what I want. Not his way, no, but something that _good_. Or _evil_. Or whatever it might be. I think of Eszett, I think—that was not as well done as it should have been. Schwarz shamed me by doing better on Weiß than I did on Eszett. I think, Schwarz I will do better by.

I sidle off and out and into my little boy who thinks he's all grown up, and he is pale inside because the uncatchable has caught him, and I say, Hello, Schuldig, and he says, Fuck You.

Of course it's all the other way around, because I swirl minds and he doesn't have a whit of what he's swearing at. Poor little thing. Fate left me a window to play in and before Brad Crawford there is only us, my beautifully ill animal and me, and I pull down walls brick by brick, creation in reverse, and it puts him in agonies, and I take the walls down, and he thrash thrash thrashes inside and out and not a sound, and before you know it the job is done! And the world is a book so open it won't close at all. And Schuldig screams at the thronging throngs, the crowding crowds, and Brad Crawford who is all for himself runs, runs, RUNS from the next room to find the problem with our poor pretty telepath. And he doesn't understand at all, deary, only moves useless hands in useless plans, half-forgotten before they begin. Both of them broken for now at least, deary. Both of them useless and losing to me.

Yes, yes, of course—Schwarz is going to be my masterpiece.

------------------

March 8, 2006

PenguinKye


	17. N: E

A Sense of Dark

by Penguinkye

Chapter Sixteen

October 13, 199X 2:18 A.M.

When I woke up, Crawford stood by my bed. He is a shocking thing to find standing by your bed, and he was standing there. I would have jumped, but I decided the killing Kudou had drained me of the will to move for at least a year. I settled for squinting. It made something pull on my cheek.

"Crawford?" I said, touching my face and remembering Kudou's hand spiking out to claw me.

"You never knew Schuldig whilst he lacked the control you are accustomed to, did you, Nagi?" Crawford said it mildly, in that way that meant what he was saying either was worth less than nothing or it was a really big something and because it was Crawford, who didn't bother with nothings, it was something really big. He stood still, too, which was unnerving. He wasn't pacing. Why wasn't he pacing? Here he was, a looming dark figure speaking cryptically in the almost-dark. Farf gets a lot of rep for that, but Crawford really pulls it off better. Damn creepy, like he might at any moment turn into a vampire and swoop down and rip out—

Sharp flashes of memory recalled what we'd done earlier. There were glimpses of Farf's—of Tsukiyono—that I hadn't known I'd caught. It was worse than usual, I now realized. Because it had been revenge. And Kudou—

I had caught a hundred last words in my time, short though my time was, but nothing had caught me like Youji Kudou's. I had to push them away, hard, to keep from feeling sick. I groped until I found something relevent to talk about, to distract me.

"Unmei?"

"She spoke to him," Crawford answered, since he's come to understand my one-word-at-once speech. "The parasite—whatever—whoever it may be—has been with him for weeks. The shot that killed Ouka Takatori came from Farfarello's gun, but it was jarred by something in Schuldig's mind. He called it a "buzzing". That is what killed the girl, not incompetance."

He looked pained. He cared that he'd been wrong, not for Schu's sake, but he cared.. Of course, I could have told him about the buzz, but he hadn't asked me. Or Farf. He didn't think we were smart enough to know these things. I noticed that Crawford was pausing between his mild words, which was also not normal.

"Weiß was not his fault either," Crawford said at last. I startled, because that, I hadn't known. Crawford looked tired, and now really pained, and I wondered if it was not only because he'd been wrong, but because he had blamed Schu for getting himself hurt. It made Crawford's brain twitch, and maybe even his conscience. "It was there. The parasite. Schuldig only could not hear the enemy coming because this thing was preventing him. Preventing him seeing them, without obscuring anyone else. Which means of course that it is sentient, and also powerful. Terribly powerful, I am afraid. When Weiß did approach, Schuldig was practically blinded. He had no way of escaping, and no real way of even knowing his danger.

"And you know about this morning," he added , as though trying to shake off some almost-guilt. I wanted to hit him.

He sat down and I felt my back prickle. Why was he sitting? _Why was he sitting? _Everything he'd said was bad, but it wasn't enough to make Crawford sit. The anger froze and shivered in my stomach.

"What else?" I said. Even these few words sounded edged with apprehension.

"Another incident has occurred," he said. "Since our return." And he paused again. At this point Schu would have said, Dammit, Brad Crawford, spit it out already! But I only stared at him, looking ridiculous but hardly even realizing it.

And then he did spit it out.

"It was around midnight—I'm afraid I was distracted from such things as the precise time. I would tell you what I saw, but I do not think I can describe it any better than if you see it.The thrust of the situation is--" I thought wildly, in growing foreboding, that only Brad Crawford could use the word "thrust" without even _thinking _it might have something to do with screwing-- "Whoever this attacker is has removed Schuldig's barriers. All of his barriers. There is, from what Unmei says—Unmei has returned here—nothing between Schuldig and millions of very loud minds. He is reading everything."

I was stunned into a sickened silence. I thought of Schu's mind in mine, his one laughing voice, or worse, the sheer force of the rebound when Fujimiya had stabbed him in the shoulder. I tried to test the waters, to double it in my head, and I couldn't imagine…I couldn't imagine two. Millions of minds? Millions? Having one was hard enough.

I gaped and paled like a fish drowning in air until Crawford said, "You should go and see him in order to assess—to begin to grasp, at the least—the extent of our handicap."

I gaped a little more and Crawford's eyebrows twitched inward and down, so I figured I should get up before he did something violent. I rolled sideways and out of bed, and when my feet hit the floor, my legs realized with surprise that I wanted them to hold me up. They almost didn't—I felt my knees start to buckle and saw everything slant at a sudden strange angle. Crawford reached down from somewhere and propped me up.

"What did you do to Kudou? You haven't recovered your strength yet, and your eyes are still bloodshot."

"Killed him with himself," I said, trying to steady myself. Crawford helped, and we started towards Schu's room. I must have looked pathetic, the invalid visiting the hopelessly insane.

"How?" asked Crawford. I'd done something he hadn't understood. I almost wanted to keep it a secret.

"Sped things up," I said at last, "Two minute cancer. Liver failure. Lung failure. All his fault."

"That…is vengeful, Nagi," said Crawford. He sounded pleased. I was pleased too, except that I was limping over to visit the hopelessly insane, and that was nothing to be pleased about.

And he was hopeless. God, I knew that when the door swung open, when I saw Unmei's face—with glinting eyes and a serious mouth that showed her less composed than usual. I knew it when I looked at Schu and had to snatch away my gaze and bite against my teeth hard and turn back to try again.

It was different somehow, different to see him tied up and hurt, amazingly more bearable to see him at the mercy of Weiß, than it was to see this. Weiß, I thought, Weiß was _supposed_ to hurt us. They were _supposed_ to make us look vulnerable and horrible and unsafe. But they were dead, and this was our home, and we should have been able to stop him being hurt. As for the hurt, blood was a thousand times less jarring than the total destruction of the control that made Schu, Schu.

Twitches and sloppy grimaces, eyes that shot open and wavered shut, muscles that clenched and loosened, and one hand that seemed always to sketch out other people's stories in the air by his hip. A mess was made out of his hair, and if anyone had tried to fix that, they'd failed. He muttered, but that was all.

"Part of why your treatment of Kudou impressed," said Crawford softly by my ear, making me jump, "is that you slept through the screaming." He made me cold, saying that. Unmei's glittering eyes caught ahold of mine and froze me from that side as well. I pushed past their stares and statements, stumbled towards him, feeling sick and not knowing what I was going to try to do.

I grabbed his sketching hand, struggled with it, forced it still with what little mental power I had.

"Schu," I said his name, "Schu, for God's sake. Stop it." He didn't take any mind, of course, just gibbered quietly and twitched his face towards the wall. I had a sudden, long-forgotten urge to cry, not because I was sad but because I was _angry_, and that anger swooped up from inside, and like a sob and a shout coming right out of my hand, I hit him. Of all the people I could have hit, I picked the one who loved me the most and whom I liked best, who couldn't do anything to stop me but _should have been able_.

"Nagi!" said Crawford, but I ignored him.

"_Schuldig, you bastard!_ STOP it!" I roared, as well as I could roar, and Crawford grabbed me from behind, his hands hard on my arms, and shook me until I stopped shouting.

"Nagi, control yourself!" he snapped, and I went dead still. I felt all of my weariness, and now I was exhaustedly angry as well.

"I hate you!" I said at large, and Unmei started up from the bedside, where she wasn't needed because I hadn't changed anything, and Crawford began to pull me away from Schu, which I hated, and then he was pulling one way while I pulled another, and, like the skin on my cheeks snapping free of dried blood, I snapped free of him and felt everything darken and forgot to stay conscious to shout some more.

As I passed out, something echoed huge and hollow in my ears: the last words of Youji Kudou.

April 6, 2006


End file.
